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Home > Business/Finance > Diversified Services > Shipping & Logistics
Poland Freight Transport Report Q1 2008
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Poland faces a series of key decisions affecting its status as a transit country for oil and gas pumped
through pipelines. As a traditional conduit for Russian oil and gas moving west to European consumers,
the country must deal with a series of new threats and opportunities. Warsaw believes that the Northern
European Gas Pipeline (NEGP) project - to build a pipeline under the Baltic linking Russia directly to
Germany - is a definite threat. To the south, it sees an opportunity: in alliance with Ukraine, it aims to
reverse the current flow of the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline, opening up a route for non-Russian Caspian oil
to be pumped through Poland up to Gdansk and onwards to Western consumers.
At the end of 2006 Deputy Economy Minister Piotr Naimski said the government would not allow further
privatisation of state-run natural gas monopoly PGNiG. The conservative Law and Justice party, part of
the centre-right ruling coalition at the time, argued that PGNiG was a strategic asset and that further
privatisation of the company could be dangerous to Poland’s energy security. Naimski said Poland would
press ahead with plans to diversify its energy supply taking natural gas from Norway via a series of
pipelines crossing Swedish territory from the beginning of 2011. He said the gas would enter Poland at a
new gas terminal to be built either at Gdansk or Swinoujscie, both ports on the Polish Baltic coast, at a
cost of several hundred millions of euros. A brief interruption of Russian oil supplies through the Druzhba
pipeline in January 2007- the result of a dispute between Russia and Belarus - served to remind the
Polish authorities of the supply risks they face. Overall, it is a complicated picture, but in our newly
released Poland Freight Transport Report, BMI concludes that oil and gas pipeline throughput will grow
by an average of 5.1% per annum in 2007-2011, a little down on the preceding period. We think there
will be something of a transition period as Poland tries to diversify its oil and gas supplies away from
excessive dependence on Russia.
Various factors underpin our forecast. While there is a high degree of volatility in what could be called
‘pipeline geopolitics’, we think that it remains in Warsaw’s long-term interest to strike a deal with Russia,
on the one hand, while diversifying pragmatically on the other. Poland’s own economy is expected to
grow at an average of 4.9% per annum over the next five years, providing a base line of energy demand
that will also contribute to pipeline usage.
Our overall forecast for freight carried in Poland is for continuing moderate recovery based on the
country’s good economic growth rate. The transport sector still has to play catch-up, however, given
infrastructure limitations in road and rail. We expect annual average growth in freight carried across all
modes, measured in million tonne km (mntkm), of 4.1% during the forecast period of 2007-2011. We see
the best performing sector being airfreight, which with annual average growth of 9.7%, will benefit from
the global recovery in the aviation industry, the spread of low-cost airlines and increasing integration with
European Union (EU) partners. Plans to part-privatise Poland’s national carrier, LOT Polish Airlines,
may also attract new investment. In maritime freight we are forecasting that new investment in Gdansk
port will feed through. Freight traffic carried by ship will grow by an annual average of 6.9%. Road
haulage will grow by 6.6% per annum. Here, we think strong and growing demand for haulage will
continue to be held back by the slow rate of improvement of Poland’s highway network. Finally, rail
freight will grow by an annual average of 5.5%, as the process s of reform and deregulation gradually
begins to take hold.
Poland has a composite score of 43 (out of a theoretical maximum of 70) in our freight transport Business
Environment Ranking. The country scores well on long-term political and economic risk, and on the
regulatory and competitive environment. On the other hand, freight transport growth and infrastructure
are areas of relative weakness. BMI forecasts that the total value of transport and communications GDP
will rise to US$46bn in nominal terms by 2011, representing 8.3% of Poland’s GDP. The transport and
communications sector employed 823,000 people, or 6.0% of the labour force, last year. We see that
figure staying roughly constant to 2011.
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