Address to the participants

Artur Nikolaevich Tchilingarov

Coordinator of the Project
«Saint-Petersburg — the Sea Capital of Russia»
Member of the Supreme Council' Bureau of the Party «United Russia»
First deputy chief of the faction «United Russia» in the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the 5th convocation

Dear Colleagues!

Transport and logistics system of Russia is a catalyst of the whole state’s economy, and its successful development needs a complex approach. As the development model of the world economy is transforming today, transport is a tool of realization of Russian national interests. Higher competitiveness of Russia at the world transport service market is only possible on conditions of the effective use of its major transport system’s advantages, including its transit potential.

Transport service export offers enormous possibilities for Russia. It is the reason turning this sector into a major source of income for the state has become one of the five main objectives of transport development strategies up to 2030. Attracting the foreign-trade cargoes to the Russian transport net shall be possible in the issue of building a united transport system, and specifically in the issue of the complex development of the regional transport and logistics infrastructure.

Geographical features of Russia define the priority of transport in developing the land’s competitive advantages. However, the volume and quality characteristics of the sphere, including the standard of infrastructure, do not enable effective and complete achieving the purposes of the Russian economy.

Building the modern transport infrastructure in Russia will ensure the territorial integrity of the state, unite the subjects of the Federation into an integrated economic and defence space, open the doors to raw materials bases difficult of access and contribute to the complex development of remote regions.

Transport and logistics system of Russia consists of all kinds of transport. Sea ports, as places of joining and redistribution of incoming and outgoing cargo traffic, have a huge economic significance. Attracting transit cargoes to the Russian ports directly depends on the development level of their infrastructure — by-port transport nodal points and port approaches proper. Today many of the warehouse complexes being built in Russian ports do not provide approaching railroad tracks and are completely motor transport oriented. The tax and customs systems in Russia, ports’ management structure, and transport infrastructure ownership attitudes need to be revised.

International transport corridors play the key role in realization of the transport and transit potential of Russia. Their strategic significance is in increasing the role of Russia in forming transit cargo traffics linking Europe and countries of the Asiatic-Pacific region, the Middle and Far East, the North America. One of these corridors is the North Sea Route. This transport object’s development program is one of the major and priority for the state investment projects. The significance of the North Sea Route increases impetuously as the hydrocarbon deposits are developing rapidly and the Russian and world market’s energetic needs are increasing. The full revival of the North Sea Route transport corridor will be possible as a result of the complex infrastructure development and usage of unrealized capacities of the North-West, Ural, Siberia and Far Eastern regions of Russia.

Undoubtedly, the goal of the new Russian economic policy should be in ensuring the innovative development of the regions. Of no small importance is the fact of logistic service market’s expansion which is happening in Russia nowadays, the fact of this sector’s consolidation in the whole country.

It is the elaboration of measures of the transport and logistics infrastructure development in the regions of Russia that will be the aim of the II International conference “Transport and transit potential” which will take place in St. Petersburg on September 17—18, 2009 within the framework of the “United Russia” political party project “St. Petersburg — the Sea Capital of RUSSIA”. The event will seek to find effective ways of attracting transit cargo traffic into the country.

Development of Russia in the Euro-Asiatic transport corridors, ports’ reconstruction, infrastructural dead-ends’ liquidation, drawing previously idle territories into economic usage, increasing competitiveness of Russian enterprises’ export and shortening of transport routes are just a little bit of problems which need to be thoroughly examined during the II International conference “Transport and Transit Potential”.

Let us make the sector of transport the engine of the Russian economy’s development!