Russia's Minister of Transport Igor Levitin has conceded that the Russian Customs Service is one of the reasons for the chronic backlog of trucks at the Russian border.
Levitin said on Friday that decisions by the Russian customs are not always in line with decisions by transport officials, for instance. He also acknowledged that there are problems with the flow of information among officials.
Another factor stretching out the lines of trucks is the almost exponential growth in goods traffic between the two countries. Finland's functioning logistics attract more road transport. Levitin says that traffic moves even more slowly on Russia's borders with Ukraine and Belarus, further encouraging hauliers to use the northern route.
The Russian Minister of Transport was in Lappeenranta on Friday to attend the opening of the new border crossing station at Nuijamaa. While in the city he also took part in a ceremony marking the 150th anniversary of the construction of the Saimaa Canal.
"The infrastructure of our border does not correspond to the high level that we have seen in Nuijamaa today", Levitin said.
Earlier in the week the line of lorries queueing to enter Russia via the Vaalimaa border crossing further south exceeded 40 kilometres.
The frequent backups at the border are seen as a traffic safety hazard. A number of Finnish haulage companies declared last week that they would stop going to the Vaalimaa goods terminal to pick up or drop off cargo containers.
The border bottleneck was also discussed on Friday at a meeting between the Finnish and Russian transport working group in Lappeenranta. Harri Pursiainen, a senior official at the Ministry of Transport and Communications, echoed the view of Transport Minister Levitin, saying that the problems are linked with Russian Customs; he credited the Russian Ministry of Transport with doing what it can to make cross-border traffic work better.
"The poor performance of the country's Customs is mostly to the detriment of the Russians", Pursiainen noted.
Other problems with cross-border transport were also discussed at the meeting in Lappeenranta.
Pursiainen said that Russia's Deputy Minister of Transport Sergei Aristov admitted that a vehicle fee levied by the Russians at the border violates a bilateral agreement. Nevertheless, the fee continues to be collected, at least for the time being.
