CAUCASUS - POTI FERRY COMMUNICATION: THE FIRST STEP TO BREAKING THE BLOCKADE

PanARMENIAN.Net -
It can be said that the railway blockade of Armenia is broken. Of course, thanks to the new way of communication, loaded carriages will reach Armenia from Russia in only two days which will reduce transportation cost by 15-25 percents. By the way, transportation cost will be approximately the same as it would be with the Abkhazian part of the railway. But there is a problem concerning the capacity of cargos that the Caucasus port can accept. The thing is that according to the Georgian-Russian agreement, for the beginning the volume of transportation will be quite modest. There will be only two ferries per week and of course Georgian cargos will be given priority. It means that we can count on one run a week with approximately 18 train carriages. It would be naive to suppose that 70-80 carriages per month could cover the whole turnover between Armenia and Russia.

According to experts, the maximal turnover of goods between Caucasus and Poti may make 500 thousand tons a year, but the goods station of Caucasus port cannot accept large ferries. The technical parameters of the port allow serving up to 130 meters long and 14 meters wide ferries. Meanwhile, ferries carrying heavy railroad cars have an immersion of 9 meters, though the allowable depth of immersion is 5 meters. It means that "queues" at the Caucasus port are inevitable. Currently, already 11 Armenian railroad cars are awaiting the next ferry.

The issue of constructing a new landing station at the Caucasus port was once considered and Yerevan and Moscow agreed to create a consortium with equal share. It was estimated that the project would cost 5 million dollars. Armenian party planned to pay its share from the state budget of 2000. The rest of the costs were promised to be covered by Armenian businessmen. Later on it turned out that the real cost of the project was more than 100 million and not 5. The searches for new donors started and a Spanish "Santader" banking group got interested in the project and expressed readiness to make an investment of 120 million euro. But anyway, things didn't go well and last year Russia and Georgia decided to be satisfied with existing resources and signed a contract.

Now Armenia uses Russian ferries. Previously negotiations were held for purchasing two ferries with Bulgaria and Russia. The Black Sea trade bank promised to credit 3 million dollars for the project. Perhaps it is the best time to remember about the agreements reached. The funds invested for purchasing a ferry will be repaid during 3-4 years and further on the ferry will make profit. As for the possibility of renting the Poti port, it looks like that issue is already in the past.


However that may be, it is obvious that the start of ferry communication will undoubtedly ease the troubles caused by the blockade of Azerbaijan and Turkey. There are certain grounds to hope that the Abkhazian railroad will be enabled soon after which the issue of opening the Kars-Akhalkalaki segment will be more actual.

Artyom Yerkanyan