OREANDA-NEWS. The President of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov has address the conference "The Railway Business at Transit Speeds."

The conference took place at the 16th China International Transportation and Logistic Expo, which was held in Shanghai in China on Tuesday 14 June 2016.

In his speech, the President of Russian Railways said that the primary task of transport was to meet the growing demand for transportation between Europe and Asia.

"Russia faces the acute question not only of developing the transport and logistics infrastructure in the country's eastern regions, but also of creating optimal overland freight delivery transit routes. This requires, on the one hand, using our national territory as much as possible, and on the other taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the integration processes across the Eurasian space," said Oleg Belozerov.

Russian Railways is thus actively involved in the integration of the Baikal-Amur Main Line and the Trans-Siberian in international transport corridors in order to enhance cooperation with international partners from Asia and Europe.

In 2015, the volume of traffic on the Trans-Siberian Railway was more than 113 million tons, which is 3.9% more than in 2014.

Container traffic volumes have also increased significantly. Since 2010, the volume of traffic has increased by 57% and amounted to almost 504,000 TEU containers.

Russian Railways is investing heavily in the creation of multimodal terminal complexes and transport and logistics centres and improving the technology and organisation of transit and international freight.

"We provide a number of services that allow shippers to deliver freight door-to-door on a regular and frequent basis. Two of our main products are "The Trans-Siberian in 7 days" and "The Baikal Shuttle." "However, we need more of these kind of services and are therefore developing a completely new range of high-quality products which we will soon be ready to offer to our customers," said Oleg Belozerov.

Russian Railways, together with government agencies and international partners, is working on implementing common information technology and electronic document processing. The Company is also working to improve the quality of our services, including a strict compliance with delivery times, the security and integrity of goods and providing information support to the transportation process.

"At the Company, we are constantly engaged in developing competitive tariffs for transporting international and transit freight, taking into account the directions of freight flows on alternative routes. At the moment, tariffs for transit container shipments on fast trains via Russia's Far Eastern ports to Europe are set at the lowest possible level. The discount is up to 60%, depending on the container size and the route," said Oleg Belozerov.

In cooperation with its foreign partners, the RZD Holding is involved in the development of a direct rail link with China via the existing border crossings, with transit freight flows across Mongolia and the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union, namely Kazakhstan and Belarus.

In addition, the use of transport infrastructure around the Black Sea, which is now being actively upgraded, will facilitate the development of a route directly from China to the countries of Southern Europe.