Water transport plummeted last year due to war and drought

Last year was not a good year for domestic freight transport, due to the international economic difficulties, the jump in energy prices, inflation, the Russian-Ukrainian war, and crop losses caused by the drought, freight transport in Hungary fell. The volume of road, rail and water traffic (261 million tons) decreased by 6 percent, and its performance (50.2 billion ton kilometers) decreased by 0.5 percent compared to last year in 2021, according to preliminary statistical data.

The Russian-Ukrainian war limited the Silk Road traffic between Asia and Europe to the Polish-Belarusian border, avoiding Hungary. In addition, due to the booming Russian-Chinese trade, there was a lack of capacity on the Trans-Siberian railway. At the same time, as a result of the war, a new direction of transport was born: both Ukrainian import and export traffic between the Adriatic ports and Ukraine started, which, however, declined greatly in November due to the attacks on the Ukrainian infrastructure. Within Europe, the railways lost their competitiveness due to unorganized renovations, to which was added the increase in energy costs, which affected the railways worse. Therefore, the previous trend was reversed, and part of the traffic was diverted from the railway to the public road.