WELLGO participated AmCham Round Table “Foreign trade, logistics and transport: Challenges and opportunities”

Natalia Bochkova, CEO & Founder of WELLGO Group, attended and presented her analysis of current market characteristics.
Opened by Robert Agee, President, and moderated by Alexander Kosov, co-chair of the AmCham Customs & Transportation Committee, speakers included:

Olga Lifanova, RCIS Customs Compliance Leader of GE HealthCare and Co-chair of the AmCham Customs & Transportation Committee, who opened the presentations with her summary of Risk Reduction in Import / Export operations. She outlined two fundamental elements of the Risk Management System – Internal procedures, regulations, training, and communications being one, and Operational Reporting (tracking) and Vendor Management being the other. She particularly highlighted Customs representative Due Diligence and KPIs.

Olga moved on to their global approach to product classification, citing centalisation and archiving as a critical point. It is considered essential to monitor trends and changes in legislation to assess the impact on the business. Although quite technical in nature, the presentation was very well received.

Natalia Bochkova, General Director & Founder of WELLGO Group gave a wide-reaching analysis of the current Logistics market, particularly highlighting risks and complications. Strengthened compliance with sanctions, tightening carrier requirements, and payment blocking were highlighted as significant threats to business.

Logistics companies are constantly faced with an ever-changing landscape of carrier and routing choices, shipping route volatility, and global tariff policies. Global protectionism and polarisation is having a highly restrictive effect. The resultant effect of this, on the Russian market, is of course a reduced demand for goods. There are high fluctuations on the Russia-China trade lane, with road transport ever-increasing presence from Chinese carriers. Further regulation, labelling, proof of origin and protective duties are a constant cause for concern. In the light of these issues,

Natalia mapped out a method for shippers to follow. Paraphrasing this:

• Set transport priorities, and have a plan A and plan B. Maybe even plan C!
• Derive the full cost of services – are all services included, and how are requirements recorded.
• See the transport plan, deadlines, quality parameters, tracking options, partners, validation options.
• Does your supplier have experience, certifications and if necessary, a Quality Management System?

Natalia moved on to present a snapshot of 4 major Trade Lanes - Russia-China, Russia-India, Russia-UAE and Russia-Turkey, split between air and ocean freight. Although too much to detail here, WELLGO would be pleased to discuss this and other aspects of service upon request.

Finally, the word “resilience” is now becoming a key watchword in WELLGO business. WELLGO digitalization projects are advancing at a pace, with constant market scanning and analysis leading to evaluation and planning alternatives. Early involvement of all parties, flexible payment terms and overall, a readiness and eagerness for positive change, is a clear advantage.

Dmitry Kirillov, Partner in Lidings Law firm, presented the audience with a current “hot topic” subject - that of International currency payments. The audience saw an analysis of payment methods such as Agency payments, Bank Transfers and Crypto Currency. The pros and cons of these methods were compared. Due to current economic difficulties, some companies have trialed crypto currency exchanges, which is what Dmitriy then went on to describe in detail.

Leading with an overview of crypto currency and examples of Stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, and Tether gold, Dimitriy also mentioned Central Bank Digital Currencies, for example the digital ruble. He then put forward a hypothetical trading model to illustrate how the chosen crypto asset may be used.

Clearly if companies chose to follow this method, an entire accounting system would have to be developed to do so. Taxation , Customs treatment of crypto and valuation of the crypto asset are further complications and must be considered. A further critical point is the Russian Central Bank attitude to crypto, which currently is not entirely positive.

Visita Shidaev, Senior specialist in intellectual property rights protection concerning customs regulation at TKM Consulting, presented his overview on Counterfeiting in the current economic climate.

Essentially, violators can import counterfeit goods into the territory of the Russian Federation under the guise of parallel imports. Dishonest importers register declarations of conformity based on forged contracts. Customs officers cannot distinguish original goods from counterfeit ones. In 2022, the scale of this amounted to $22 billion. The rapid growth of online market places has accelerated growth in counterfeit volumes.

Visita described some actions being taken to address this issue. He recommended:

• Registration in Rospatent, WIPO,
• Registration in TROIS (Customs Register of Intellectual Property Objects of the RF)

He also mentioned counterfeit detection training for employees of the Federal Customs Service,and law enforcement agencies.

Anastasia Aniskina, Associate, Warehouse and Industrial Real Estate Department, CMWP, presented a summary of the Moscow Warehousing real estate at the moment. In summary – the market has stabilised, rate hikes have stopped, and she has seen a slowdown in business expansion. The current key demand drivers are manufacturing and e-commerce, with blocks of 20,000 sq m starting to appear. However, these are usually sub-lease offers, in the e-commerce and multi- channel retail sectors. Rent growth is in line with inflation.

Dmitry Dolgikh, CPO at Agora Freight, presented on the use of AI in cargo transportation and tariff management. Dmitriy began by describing the problems of using AI in this field. These include GDPR rules in the EU, differing document standards and formats, language barriers and so on. In addition, there are cyber crime and underdeveloped IT infrastructure issues in many countries.

A comparison of the ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek and MS CoPilot engines was demonstrated, which gave highly varied cost results, ranging from a few hundred to around $5000 for an example shipment. This inconsistency demonstrates the current limitations of general-purpose AI. He then contrasted this with the Agora in-house application, which includes self-populated tariffs and rates in order to “fill the gaps”. Dmitriy went on to offer a brief overview of the future of AI in this field.