Federal Marine and River Transport Agency in Russia announced that the country’s ports’ capacity increased by 30 million tons during 2010 and currently amounts to over 660 million tons.

The most intensively developing in Russia are the ports in the Baltic, the Far East, the Black and Azov seas basins.

As stated by head of the agency Alexander Dovydenko, in 2010, the Baltic Sea region completed the construction of Baltijsk and Ust-Luga ferry line complex. Then followed the formation of the port’s water area. Increases in container handling capacity were made in St. Petersburg. In this port, the construction of a huge passenger and cruise ship terminal complex continued, and part of its capacity has already been launched.

The development of Russian ports in 2010 was invested 14 billion rubles (over 1.2 billion litas).

By 2016, Russia plans to increase its ports’ capacity up to 770 million tons.

This follows the Russian Transport System Development Programme for the year 2010-2015. It covers development plans not only of the marine transport and ports, but also of railways and air lines. The estimated sums of money amount to trillions of rubles.

Major works will continue to be held at the port of Ust-Luga, which starts operating the oil and its products’ handling terminal this year. It is also planned to form water areas and build bulk cargo and container terminals, adapted to accommodate ships with a draft up to 17 meters.

This year, it is anticipated to begin the deepening of the shipping channel at the port of St.

Petersburg.

Investments will flow to the port of Kaliningrad as well. The intention is to reconstruct its shipping channel, build offshore business capabilities in Kaliningrad, Svetlyj, and Balstijske.

In general, by the year 2016, the Russian ports are planned to triple their container handling capacity. In the pre-crisis year of 2008, Russia handled 3.4 million TEUs of containers, of which 2.2 million TEUs of containers were loaded in the Baltic ports.

Other directions in development of the Russian ports encompass the increase in oil and oil product, coal, Ro Ro, and grain terminals capacity.

In 2010, Russian ports handled 526 million tons of cargo and received 187 thousand ships.