Transport and Communications
Belarus is a link connecting the East and the West. It is the shortest railways and motorways linking countries of Western Europe with the CIS states, Southern and Central Europe with the north-western regions of Russia and Scandinavia run through Belarus. The following transport corridors cross the country: No2 Berlin-Warsaw-Minsk-Moscow; No9 the Russian border with Finland-Vyborg-St. Petersburg-Vitebsk- Gomel and farther through Ukraine, Moldavia, Bulgaria and Greece; a branch of corridor No9 Gomel-Minsk-Vilnius-Klaipeda- Kaliningrad.
A two-lane electrified railway Moscow-Minsk-Berlin 1.874 kilometres long and a motorway Brest-Minsk-Russian border 592 kilometres long run through the territory of Belarus within the framework of transport corridor No2.
Transport corridor No9 “North-South” connects the countries of South-Eastern Europe with Ukraine, Belarus and Finland. It provides Belarus with a direct access to the ports of the Baltic and Black Seas and Russia with the shortest way between the central part and the Kaliningrad region.
Belarus has an extensive network of motorways enabling it to ensure year-round connection with all the inhabited localities. The country takes the 15th place in the world in terms of density of public domain roads per 1 sq. km, and the 12th in terms of their stretch per 1 thous. of residents.
The density of public domain roads made 85.7 thous. km as of January 1, 2009, including 15.5 thous. km of the Republic’s roads, and 70.3 thous. km of local roads. According to the State Programme on Renovation and Development of a Village, 1 thous.970 km of roads underwent repair and restoration work.
The stretch of the country’s trunk railroads amounts to 5.5 thous.km. With a view to boost export volume, a great attention is paid to the introduction of automatic rolling-stock identification system (ARSIS) enabling fuller, quicker and more accurate determination of any train location.
The administrations of railways of Belarus, Russia, Poland and Germany have founded a joint venture “Eurasia Rail Logistic” CJSC in order to increase the quality and volume of cargo transportations by railroads within the limits of № 2 International Transport Corridor. The introduction of innovative technologies in organization of high-speed container through trains passing proceeds.
The Belarusian Railway carries out active cooperation with international transport organizations.
The largest airport of the Republic is the National Airport “Minsk”. There also operate airports of “Minsk 1”, “Gomel”, “Brest”, “Grodno”, “Vitebsk”, “Mogilev”. The main passenger carrier is the “National Air Company “Belavia” RUE which is the member of the International Air Transport Association IATA.
Currently, two airports regularly conduct flights to 14 cities of far abroad countries. Regular flights to the CIS countries are carried out by 10 routes. Charter flights are rendered to many countries of the world: Spain, Ireland, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Lebanon and others.
Interstate and intergovernmental air transport agreements are concluded with 39 states. The activity to unify regulatory legal acts controlling the activity of civil aviation of the Republic of Belarus with regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation, the standards and recommended practice of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is being carried out.
There is an extensive network of oil- and gas-pipelines passing along the territory of the Republic of Belarus. Petroleum pipelines are presented by large, high capacity systems. The petroleum pipeline of “Druzhba” provides the Polotsk and Mozyr oil refineries with crude oil. The petroleum pipeline includes oil-trunk pipeline systems with complete technology cycle of Unecha-Polotsk-Ventspils, Polotsk-Birjai-Majeikai. Natural gas transit is carries out through the systems of gas pipelines: Torzhok - Minsk- Ivatsevichi, Ivatsevichi - Dolina, Ivatsevichi –Slonim - Grodno, Minsk – Vilnius, Minsk - Gomel, Kobrin - Brest - Warsaw, Yamal - Europe, Dashava - Minsk, Ivatsevichi - Vilnius - Riga.
In 2007, the Republic’s transport satisfied actual demand in transport services of the country’s economy. There were conveyed 474.7 mln.tons of cargoes (105.9% as compared to the level of 2006), an increase in transportation volumes was performed by all transport types. A great job was done to arrange transportations of foreign trade cargoes of the Republic of Belarus by sea transport. The volume of sea transportations arranged by transport-shipping companies amounted to 3.8 mln. tons.
In 2007, all types of transport conveyed 2573.4 mln. of passengers (103.3% to the level of 2006), including automobile transport - 1528.1 mln. passengers, railway transport – 92.6 mln. passengers, air and inland water transport – 0.6 and 0.2 mln. passengers respectively.
The development of foreign trade in service sector continues. The growth of transport service exports made 137.1% to the level of 2006.
The main tasks of transport branch in the upcoming period will be the following:
- pursuing of united road and transport policy, improvement of legal and economic conditions for transportation activity;
-increase in activity in the field of foreign economy relations and logistics, expanding the volume of transportation services on foreign markets;
- maximal use of a favourable geographic location of the Republic;
- development of sea transportation by Belarusian transport and shipping companies;
- updating and development of transport enterprises production capacities, improvement of economic conditions for their financial and economic activities;
- implementation of innovative development programmes, determination of trends to create new capacities and productions, introduction of new technologies.
