Russian authorities are moving to renovate the Kraskino border crossing between Russia and China, aiming to get it running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The crossing’s outmoded infrastructure is currently a bottleneck for seafood trade, especially for the crab sector, which relies on the Kraskino entrance to China heavily for its export trade.
Russian Vice Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev issued an order to the Ministry of Transport, the Customs Service, the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East, the Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-being, and the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, to put measures into place to ensure the Kraskino border crossing remains open around the clock.
Earlier, the Ministry of Transport published a draft of decree on the reconstruction of the crossing in 2020-2021. According to the document, after the renovation, the daily transit capacity should be 150 trucks. At the moment, Kraskino’s working hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, except for Sundays. The transit capacity is only 48 vehicles a day in both direction, meaning just 24 trucks as a maximum may leave Russia.
The limited capacity is causing frustration and losses for Russian seafood firms, with several companies reporting they have had truckloads of crab die while waiting in queue at the crossing.
Political discussion regarding the Kraskino crossing rose to a national level in late 2019, when industry trade groups – including the Far East Crab Catchers Association and the Primorye Fisheries Association – contacted FSB and the Customs Service complaining that wait times at the border had risen to eight days.
“Five metric tons of live scallop were spoiled in this queue,” Primorye Fisheries Association President Georgiy Martynov told Fishnews.
The situation grew more severe as several vessels prepared to land their catch at the port of Zarubino, which had run out of storage capacity. Martynov said fishing companies feared that the bottleneck could eventually translate into under-utilization of quotas, which could lead to lower future quota allocations.
The situation was resolved after the government extended the hours the border was open and arranged for a special corridor for expedient processing of live seafood shipments.
However, after the peak of the fishing season, the border resumed its previous operational hours, The new order issued by Trutney seeks to create a more lasting, longer-term solution to the problem. Legally, Trutnev’s decree must be implemented by 1 September, 2020, and the law also requires monthly intermediate progress reports.
Photo courtesy of Kirill Skorobogatko/Shutterstock
