Saimaa Canal lease extended 50 years

Rental fee paid to Russia quadruples

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After nearly four years of talks, Finland and Russia reached agreement on Wednesday on a 50-year extension of the lease agreement for Finland’s use of the Saimaa Canal.
      The canal runs for 43 kilometres, from Lappeenranta on the Saimaa waterway in the southwest of Finland, through Russian territory, to Vyborg, in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland.
      If the governments and parliaments of the two countries accept the proposed agreement, it will come into effect in 2010.
     
The annual rental fee for using the canal will increase fourfold, from EUR 300,000 to EUR 1,22 million. Additional fees will also be paid, depending on how many vessels navigate the canal.
      Harri Pursiainen, Chief of Staff at the Ministry of Transport and Communications, feels that the terms are reasonable. He led the negotiations on the Finnish side.
      “We have to keep in mind that the present rental fee is from 1963, and it has been re-examined only once - in the early 1990s.”
      Calculated on the basis of the transport volume of 2008, Pursiainen says that the total annual rent would be about EUR 1.5 million.
     
The Saimaa Canal was opened to traffic in its present form in 1968, but the lease agreement was signed already in 1963.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Saimaa Canal: political symbol for 150 years (8.9.2006)
  Saimaa Canal - a short history (8.9.2006)
  Cargo traffic in Saimaa Canal breaks records in 2001 (27.12.2001)

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