Starting December 20, a new procedure for allocating railway capacity will come into effect in Kazakhstan, as announced by the Association of Kazakhstani Freight Railway Carriers. In cases where a rail section lacks sufficient capacity to accommodate all requests, the carrier will automatically rank shipments according to a 10-level priority scale. For the agricultural and food production sectors, this news is a mixed bag: while perishable goods and socially significant food products have been elevated to the fifth priority level, they will still rank below containerized cargo and high-value-added goods in the event of a severe shortage of rail capacity, reports the news agency APK Novosti.
"As of December 20, the Rules for the Transportation of Goods by Rail will introduce a priority ranking system for applications in situations where a rail section’s capacity is insufficient," the Association stated.
The hierarchy is as follows: Top priority is given to shipments required for restoring rail operations, firefighting, emergency response—particularly during states of emergency or martial law—as well as special military-related transport. Next in line are containerized shipments (across all types of transport) and international transit. Following these are domestic and export shipments of high-value-added goods (from a designated list of priority products) and energy-related hydrocarbons transported in specialized rolling stock.
Next are perishable goods and socially significant food products, along with coal intended for energy facilities and the public utility sector during the heating season. These are followed by raw materials, components, and equipment destined for domestic manufacturing plants. Second to last are raw energy commodities exported in general-purpose rolling stock, with all other types of cargo ranking last.
If capacity remains insufficient to accommodate all requests within a single priority tier, the carrier will allocate it automatically using a proportionality coefficient: the available capacity of the rail section is divided by the total volume requested for that specific category. If the requested volume still cannot be accommodated, the consignor will be offered an alternative route or a different timeframe for shipment. Up to 5% of the capacity for each phase is held in reserve for applications submitted after the scheduled period has concluded.