As a result of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict the crisis formed in the Armenian cargo transportation gets even deeper. If initially at the beginning of the conflict no ships would enter the Georgian Poti and Batumi ports now one more problem is added to that. Last Saturday the railway bridge (40 kilometer), which takes from Gori to Tbilisi. Officials in Yerevan said they were assured by the Georgian side that the repairs will be complete in one or two days. But according to Reuters, Georgian railway officials expect to reopen the bridge within 10 days. Still, the news agency cited a spokesman for Azerbaijan’s national railroad as saying that a smaller, disused rail bridge is being prepared for use in the meantime. The Georgian railway is the main transport link between Armenia and the Georgian Black Sea ports of Batumi and Poti that process more than 90 percent of freight shipped to and from the landlocked country. Cargo traffic through the ports was seriously complicated by Russian air strikes on civilian and military targets in Georgia that stopped only late last week. The group of 12 Armenian specialists together with their Georgian colleagues restored the damaged part of the railway in the town of Gori, the Armenian ministry of transport and communication reports. The Armenian specialists have already returned, and currently the restored section of the railway is being tried out. However, the exact date of operation of the railway is not known. It is not excluded that the railway may be blown up in some other segment. That is the reason why the Armenian government decided to transport the cargo and especially the gasoline via trucks. A working group was established and the coordination of which is conducted by the cargo transporter Apaven company. The first pack of trucks left on Sunday evening. The planned launch of the second pack was delayed until the trucks would load the fuel. It is quite a difficult work to find that many drivers and arrange the documents of the drivers. According to the director of Apaven Gagik Aghajanyan all the structures connected with roads and transportation immediately react to those issues.
– None of the transporting companies has that many trucks to transport large amount of fuel. The trucks were collected from the whole territory of Armenia. 90% of the drivers work inside Armenia and don’t have license of leaving the borders. The technical documentation of those trucks is usually outdated. The passport bureau adopted a schedule of 24-hour operation. All the issues connected with documentation is solved immediately. The means of the defense ministry were also used. And all the structures that somehow deal with the cargo transportation resolve al the issues that come by I was pleasantly surprised to see how accurately these structures were functioning. I realized that if the state wants something it can do it. If today I as an average citizen had to change the technical documentation of my car I am sure I would have to spend a lot of time and energy.
– Mr. Aghajanyan, you said that at present you are only transporting the gasoline. But how much wheat is left? Is there any other cargo that is to arrive in Armenia from some other countries? Is the process of transportation delayed because of these events in Georgia?
– According to the information that I have there are 106 wagons of wheat to be transported from Georgia. In this case the situation is even harder because the wheat is on the way – in the segment of Poti-Gori. If the cargo was launched from the port it means it underwent certain customs regulations and now it’s complicated to start over everything again. So we decided to wait until they would fix the railway bridge. There are ships with Armenian cargo that don’t even wish to enter Poti and left the cargo in Constantia, Istanbul and Italy. In order to bring it to RA those need to be moved to Georgia. But the ports cannot store unlimited cargo if the old stuff is not moved.
– What if the situation created in Georgia takes longer? Does Armenia have any other roads to use? Is it convenient to transport cargo from the Iranian Banderabas port?
– We may transport cargo through the territory of Iran but it is going to cost incomparably more expensive because there is no railroad. Besides that the port of Banderabas is 3-4 hours further than Yerevan. It is convenient to transport from Iran from Middle East, China, India, etc. The Russian and European cargo mainly arrives though Georgia.
– Under these circumstances does the necessity of Turkish roads arise even more?
– We have railroad on four directions and only one of those functions. The Turkish version will be even more profitable for us because the Turksih ports in Linzen and Samsun are no far from the Black Sea ports. If all the directors functioned we would be in the most profitable intersection of Caucasus. I am sure that the Georgian rails cannot be shut down for too long.
– Has the Apaven company done any importation or exportation on the days of the war?
– We had exported what he reached to move to the port. During this period we have removed those ships, which were supposed to move the stuff to Russia. We sent those to Istanbul. We will replace the ships there because it is possible that from Poti ships won’t move to Russia for a long time. That way we would damage our cargo. We don’t export the stuff from Armenia because there is no railroad functioning at present. We refuse to transport the cargo through auto trucks because that kind of stuff is pretty fragile and sensitive for auto transportation.
– Mr. Aghajanyan, if the Georgian-Russian conflict appeases it is possible that Russia will not accept any ships launched from Georgia. In this case how are we going to regulate the process of exportation from Armenia? Will there not be new problems originated in the Ukrainian Ilichevsk port?
– Nothing is excluded at wartime. If Russia cuts its post and aviation communication with Georgia it may do the same to the ships. Let us remember that we didn’t have this chance for a long time and we were only using the Ukrainian ferry boats. The ships when arriving from Ukraine do not enter the Russian sea zone.