Logisticians blame Gosuslugi for congestion at border crossing with China

The Izvestia newspaper reported yesterday that traffic jams had occurred at the largest border crossing on the Russian-Chinese border, Zabaikalsk, with trucks and transport vehicles waiting for their passage for weeks. The publication believes that from October 1, the fee for collecting waste cars and special equipment will be increased in the Russian Federation, so sellers are massively transporting goods at the old price, which has led to an overload at checkpoints.

According to Asia Import Group, one of the reasons for the congestion is that since September 1 of this year, trucks at the Zabaikalsk international checkpoint have to book an electronic queue through the State Services portal, and there has not yet been any work done to obtain spaces through this platform.

“From September 1, 2023, it was already necessary to obtain the opportunity to go through this checkpoint electronically. However, the actions were carried out through another service posted on the Rosgranstroy website. The system had already been in operation for a year; booking a queue was not difficult. But the transition to state services complicated the process,” the company says.

Asia Import Group’s transport partners point out that it is still quite difficult to book free slots through the portal, so Chinese cargo is forced to stay at the border for 1-2 weeks. At this time they are stored in temporary storage warehouses.

“It is likely that in the future the queueing at Gosuslugi will also be solved by the carriers and it will not be difficult. But it is difficult to predict when this will happen,” Asia Import Group said.

On September 4, Deputy Head of the Federal Customs Service of Russia Vladimir Ivin reported that two IDK portals were installed at the Zabaikalsk checkpoint, which made it possible to increase the scanning speed by 1.5 times (up to 250 vehicles per day) compared to the MIDK.

Ivin added that over the past 10 years, the distribution of foreign trade has changed: if earlier the Western direction accounted for 47%, Asia – 29%, now Asia accounts for 66% and the European Union – 11%. The cargo turnover of the post in the first half of 2024 increased by 34% in terms of imports and 5 times in terms of exports, the Federal Customs Service said.