Delay to Saimaa Canal Opening Costly
Staff Writer
The opening of the shipping season on the Saimaa Canal did not occur as planned on April 6 because Russian customs had no checkpoint working, Finnish information agency STT reported Wednesday. It eventually opened late Thursday afternoon. The canal, which runs from Vyborg through a series of locks to Lappeenranta, is the main cargo shipping transit connection from the Baltic Sea to the lakes of Central Finland. Fifteen cargo ships, carrying 30,000 metric tons of freight were stuck in the canal by Wednesday afternoon. Finnish companies face financial losses from the delays of more than $650,000, STT reported. "Several ships are stuck now and cannot sail into Lake Saimaa because the Russian customs will not let them go through the canal," Jukka Vaisanen, head of the Finnish Maritime Administration Traffic Division, said Thursday in a phone interview before the opening. "The losses are estimated to be several thousand euros," he said. The problem arose in fall last year when Russian customs started to implement a decision taken in 2002 to move the canal's border checkpoint from Brusnichnoye to Pyalli, closer to the Finnish-Russian border. "We informed the authorities at the federal and regional level that it was necessary to set up suitable conditions for the operation," Kommersant quoted Anatoly Utkin, a Northwest customs representative, as saying Thursday. "But after half a year the check point has still not been set up, so for this reason we can not register cargo ships or let them through." On Wednesday, the Finns offered Russian customs the use of a small building that belongs to Finland in order to start operations. In addition, the Finnish Maritime Administration has offered to contribute $3 million to Russian customs to organize the work of the new checkpoint.
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