Key Findings
CPMM in 2022 showed the following year-on-year changes in Kazakhstan’s road and rail transport data from 2021:
- Road border-crossing time improved from 8.2 hours to 4.3 hours.
- The cost decreased from $567 to $317.
- Total road transport cost was down from $2,422 to $1,493.
- Road SWOD rose from 28.6 km/h to 31.2 km/h, and SWD from 49.9 km/h to 51.1 km/h.
- Rail border-crossing time continued its 2021 rise and was up 15.7% from 57.2 hours to 67.4 hours.
- The cost of crossing borders by rail dropped slightly from $308 to $297.
- Total rail transport cost declined from $924 to $883.
- Rail SWOD rose from 49.0 km/h to 57.9 km/h. SWD was up from 8.9 km/h to 10.4 km/h.
Table 3.7: Trade Facilitation Indicators for Kazakhstan, 2020–2022
| Road Transport | Rail Transport | ||||||||
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | ||||
| TFI1 | Time taken to clear a border-crossing point (hour) | 8.6 | 8.2 | 4.3 | 48.6 | 57.2 | 67.4 | ||
| Outbound | 8.0 | 5.9 | 4.0 | 8.9 | 11.4 | 6.8 | |||
| Inbound | 8.9 | 9.5 | 4.6 | 54.4 | 61.8 | 78.0 | |||
| TFI2 | Cost incurred at border-crossing clearance ($) | 121 | 567 | 317 | 341 | 308 | 297 | ||
| Outbound | 58 | 30 | 19 | 124 | 139 | 185 | |||
| Inbound | 153 | 875 | 504 | 356 | 319 | 313 | |||
| TFI3 | Cost incurred to travel a corridor section ($, per 500km, per 20-ton cargo) | 1,850 | 2,422 | 1,493 | 724 | 924 | 883 | ||
| TFI4 | Speed to travel on CAREC Corridors (km/h) | 29.2 | 28.6 | 31.2 | 15.3 | 8.9 | 10.4 | ||
| SWOD | Speed without Delay (km/h) | 52.9 | 49.9 | 51.1 | 65.2 | 49.0 | 57.9 | ||
km = kilometer, km/h = kilometers per hour, SWOD = speed without delay, TFI = trade facilitation indicator.
Source: Asian Development Bank.
Table 3.8: Border-Crossing Performance in Kazakhstan, 2020–2022
| BCP, Corridor and Direction of Trade | Duration, hours | Cost, $ | ||||||||
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |||||
| Road Transport | ||||||||||
| Aul | (3) | Outbound | 2.4 | – | – | 26 | – | – | ||
| Inbound | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||||
| Kairak | (1) | Outbound | – | 3.1 | 4.0 | – | 18 | 15 | ||
| Inbound | 4.0 | – | – | 30 | – | – | ||||
| Zhaisan | (1, 6) | Outbound | 3.3 | 3.2 | 3.1 | 11 | 6 | 7 | ||
| Inbound | 2.0 | 1.5 | 0.8 | 23 | 19 | 26 | ||||
| Tazhen | (2, 6) | Outbound | 10.7 | 10.0 | 5.3 | 94 | 62 | 41 | ||
| Inbound | 7.3 | 4.7 | 4.4 | 85 | 60 | 48 | ||||
| Kurmangazy | (6) | Outbound | 3.3 | 3.1 | 2.9 | 7 | 7 | 7 | ||
| Inbound | 2.2 | 2.3 | 1.7 | 9 | 7 | 6 | ||||
| Konysbayeva | (3, 6) | Outbound | 12.0 | 5.9 | 5.0 | 79 | 41 | 33 | ||
| Inbound | 10.9 | 5.1 | 1.4 | 106 | 52 | 60 | ||||
| Taskala | (1, 6) | Outbound | 2.8 | 2.9 | 2.7 | 9 | 7 | 5 | ||
| Inbound | 2.4 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 18 | 5 | 5 | ||||
| Pogodaevo | (0) | Outbound | 3.1 | – | – | 10 | – | – | ||
| Inbound | 2.0 | 2.5 | 2.1 | 10 | 6 | 4 | ||||
| Dostyk | (1, 2) | Outbound | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||
| Inbound | 17.0 | 46.8 | 20.7 | 602 | 4,840 | 4,499 | ||||
| Merke | (1, 3) | Outbound | 2.5 | 0.6 | 2.8 | 8 | 20 | 18 | ||
| Inbound | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||||
| Karasu | (1) | Outbound | 4.0 | 1.3 | 0.6 | 32 | 14 | 13 | ||
| Inbound | 15.5 | 1.5 | 5.7 | 29 | 18 | 12 | ||||
| Kuryk | (2) | Outbound | 69.7 | 61.6 | 8.5 | 177 | 263 | 44 | ||
| Inbound | 23.5 | 17.7 | 0.5 | 308 | 312 | 64 | ||||
| Nur Zholy | (1) | Outbound | 6.7 | – | – | 290 | – | – | ||
| Inbound | 5.1 | 19.6 | 10.7 | 315 | 3,918 | 1,326 | ||||
| Rail Transport | ||||||||||
| Saryagash | (3, 6) | Outbound | 8.9 | 11.3 | 9.9 | 124 | 132 | 129 | ||
| Inbound | 1.7 | 4.0 | – | 14 | 7 | – | ||||
| Aktau | (2) | Outbound | – | – | 3.6 | – | – | 220 | ||
| Inbound | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||||
| Dostyk | (1, 2) | Outbound | – | 6.7 | – | – | – | – | ||
| Inbound | 72.7 | 70.0 | 76.1 | 524 | 398 | 361 | ||||
| Altynkol | (1) | Outbound | 9.4 | 13.3 | – | – | – | – | ||
| Inbound | 51.4 | 65.9 | 82.6 | 271 | 276 | 260 | ||||
| Saryagash | (3, 6) | Outbound | 8.9 | 11.3 | 9.9 | 124 | 132 | 129 | ||
| Inbound | 1.7 | 4.0 | – | 14 | 7 | – | ||||
| Bolashak | (5) | Outbound | – | 30.2 | – | – | – | – | ||
| Inbound | – | – | – | – | – | – | ||||
| Turksib | (1,3) | Outbound | 6.0 | 4.4 | 7.5 | – | 175 | – | ||
BCP = border-crossing point.
Source: Asian Development Bank.
Trends and Developments
Road and rail transport performed very differently in terms of border-crossing times. The 2022 road time was 36.5% shorter than in 2021, while the average rail time rose 3.4%. The reduction in road time was due primarily to a change in 2022 in how “seaside” and “landside” activities were classified at Kuryk port on the Caspian Sea. The net effect was that some road (or “landside) activities were recategorized as seaside operations, and the time needed to complete them was no longer included in the 2022 calculations.
Relaxation of the PRC’s COVID-19-related border controls also helped reduce the time average. Starting in March 2022, the cumbersome requirement that PRC export bound for Kazakhstan and beyond be placed on pallets, shrink-wrapped, loaded into special trucks on the PRC side of border crossings, and shuttled to a neutral zone for piece-by-piece transloading onto Kazakhstan trucks was eliminated. Under the new system, PRC trucks picked up an empty trailer left by a Kazakhstan truck in a neutral zone, brought it to the PRC customs-supervised warehouse for loading, and returned it to the neutral zone, where it was picked up by a Kazakhstan truck to complete the border crossing at Nur Zholy and continue toward its destination.
Rail crossings were slower primarily due to the longer time averages at Altynkol (82.6 hours in 2022, up from 65.9 hours in 2021). The Dostyk average also rose to 76.0 hours from 70.1 hours. In both cases, the longer delays involved the gauge transfers of shipments on trains leaving the PRC and entering Kazakhstan. Wagon shortages were a common issue at this and all other rail BCPs. Despite these difficulties, however, the total transport costs for both road and rail in Kazakhstan dropped in 2022, reflecting the decline of global freight and ocean shipping rates from peak levels in 2021.[1]
Kazakhstan plays a special transit role in the CAREC region. It is the only Central Asian republic (CAR) that borders the Russian Federation, a key CAR market. The CARs’ agricultural produce exports are transported to the Russian Federation by truck or train, and Russian manufactured imports move in the opposite direction. Kazakhstan is also the PRC’s principal CAREC corridor transit route through the Russian Federation (the Northern Route) for its trade with Europe. ADB has sought to help boost CAREC regional trade by providing technical assistance to develop two economic corridors that traverse the country. These are the Almaty–Bishkek Economic Corridor, which involves Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic[2]; and the Shymkent–Tashkent–Khujand Economic Corridor across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan[3]. These projects aim to improve CPMM trade facilitation performance at high-traffic BCPs such as Akzhol–Ak Tilek, Yallama–Konysbaeva, and Sarygash–Keles.
Kazakhstan also plays an important maritime transit role through its operation of key Caspian Sea ports at Aktau and Kuryk and collaboration with Azerbaijan and Georgia on the TITR, part of the so-called Middle Corridor across Eurasia.[4] The heightened interest in the TITR brought on by the war in Ukraine and avoidance by some shippers of the Northern Corridor through the Russian Federation led to a rise in throughput along this route and through these two ports in 2022. Aktau handled slightly more than 3.8 million tons of dry bulk and oil cargo, up 9% from 2021. Container throughput rose 11% to 30,700 TEUs.[5] Kuryk, a smaller port located south of Aktau, is being rapidly modernized and will house a universal cargo terminal able to handle 1.65 million tons of goods and 150,000 TEUs each year, as well as a grain terminal, a bulk cargo terminal, and a transport and logistics center.[6]
This surge in traffic combined with infrastructure deficits created major shipment delays at Aktau seaport in 2022 lasting 5–7 days. The waits eased in the third quarter, but CPMM identified a fundamental cause to be time spent in the ports waiting for vessels to make the Caspian Sea crossing. Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company and Kazmortransflot are the two operators on the route. Their three ferries have a total capacity of 600 TEUs and make enough crossings in one week to transport 3,000 TEUs. According to the TITR, three container ships were to be added to the route in late 2022, doubling this capacity.[7]
Overall cargo transit time through Kazakhstan was halved in 2022 from 12 days to 6 days, according to the country’s prime minister, and the cooperative efforts of the TITR members had cut shipment time from the PRC to Georgia’s Black Sea ports from 38−53 days to 19−23 days. The prime minister projected a further reduction to 14−18 days by the end of 2023.
[1] Readers can refer to CPMM annual reports for 2020 and 2021 for discussions of how the global COVID-19 pandemic impacted freight rates globally.
[2] ADB, www.adb.org/projects/56111-001/main
[3] ADB, www.adb.org/projects/52188-001/main
[4] Although Turkmenistan also has a seaport at Turkmenbashy on the Caspian Sea, it is not a member of the TITR.
[5] The statistics were reported in PortNews (https://en.portnews.ru/news/341411/). The official websites of Aktau and Kuryk had not reported the official numbers by the time the report was prepared.
[6] This is reported in Kuryk Port Development https://kuryk.kz/en/projects.html.
[7] https://www.portseurope.com/three-more-container-ships-to-double-the-cargo-capacity-of-the-middle-corridor-between-aktau-and-baku/.
Recommendations
Review the shuttle truck procedure at Dostyk. The average cost for a road crossing at the Dostyk BCP with the PRC was $4,499 in 2022, which continued the trend from 2021 and was abnormally high compared with fees at other road BCPs. This was due to Kazakhstan’s imposition in August 2021 of a shuttle truck operation that prevented foreign trucks from entering Dostyk directly. Shipments from the PRC were carried on PRC trucks to the PRC’s Alashankou BCP, where they were transloaded on to Kazakhstan shuttle trucks. The Kazakhstan transport company operating the shuttle completed the crossing formalities on both sides of the border, and the shipment reentered Kazakhstan through Dostyk where it was transferred to foreign trucks using a TIR Carnet to move to the final destination. The costs of this shuttle operation were generally $1,500 but, in some cases, rose to $12,000. An entire shipment moving from the PRC to Europe under a TIR Carnet costs $30,000 to $40,000 one-way. The border authorities should review this shuttle operation as it adds time and cost to transit shipments.
Increase the rail throughput capacity at Dostyk and Altynkol. Kazakhstan’s two rail BCPs reported inbound border-crossing times in 2022 that were longer than in 2021 and exceeded those of all other rail BCPs. Given that the Dostyk and Altynkol BCPs are gateways for the bilateral trade between the PRC and Kazakhstan and other CARs, as well as for the PRC–European Northern Route and the alternative Middle Corridor, it is imperative that the throughput capacity be expanded at both. The delays at these BCPs were due to the increased traffic during the year and to inadequate infrastructure, aging locomotives, and a shortage of wagons. Kazakhstan should consider enlarging and/or constructing new transshipment terminals, streamlining the rail operations, and encouraging private sector lessors to expand the supply of rail wagons.
Expand hard and soft infrastructure for Caspian ports and crossings. Aktau has limited handling capacity, one reason that many containers were left waiting for the Caspian Sea crossing in the first half of 2022. The seaport needs expansion and upgraded cranes. More ships are required to meet the trans-Caspian shipment demand in a timely fashion. Information on shipment status needs to be improved. In addition to the slow pace and high costs of moving freight along the Middle Corridor, private sector shippers find it hard to track the status of their cargo. Kazakhstan and its fellow TITR members Azerbaijan and Georgia need to work individually and collaborate on adopting digital systems to provide better access to shipment information and status.