Lithuanian carriers are intensively inspected in Belarus

Lithuanian motor carriers are losing about €200-280 thousand a day due to stricter inspections on the territory of Belarus, the president of the Lithuanian national association of motor carriers Linava Romas Austinskas told RZD-Partner.

Due to the increased number of cars, Belarusian border guards send Lithuanian tractors from the external checkpoints to the internal customs checkpoints.

"If earlier the trucks passed control at Lithuanian-Belarusian checkpoints in 3-5 hours, today the vast majority of drivers have to go deep into the country, to Minsk, for additional checks, where cargo is unloaded, checked and loaded again, and for these manipulations carriers, of course, pay themselves. And now the procedure takes 3-4 days," noted R. Austinskas. According to his words about 80% of Lithuanian carriers are subject to thorough inspection of cargoes and documents and, as a rule, they especially check cargos which are in transit to Russia. Some of the drivers now choose Latvia for transit to Russia.

Back in early September, President Lukashenko said that Minsk might block the transit of cargoes from Western Europe in response to sanctions imposed by Western countries. TELS experts assessed the likelihood of this scenario in such a radical form as unlikely.

"There is hope that the threats voiced by the Belarusian president will not be implemented, because it is not beneficial to either Belarus or Russia, but it will be very beneficial to Lithuania, Latvia and even Ukraine - their transit potential will increase. Belarus will lose income from transit, Russian and Belarusian carriers will incur additional losses, imported goods, raw materials and components will become more expensive," commented Andrei Abragimovich, General Director of TELS CARGO.

But, as we can see, additional difficulties for Western carriers in crossing the Belarusian border have been created.

Used source: RZD-Partner