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Sudden stop in Finnish-Russian car transit

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The transit of cars was believed to exceed one million vehicles this year. Now, however, the vigorous growth in car imports to Russia via Finland has come to a sudden stop.

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Cars make up more than 30 percent of the Russia-bound transit traffic on Finnish roads, Helsingin Sanomat reports, and Russia gets more than 70 percent of all its new cars from the Finnish transit. Now, however, the world financial crisis is putting its effect on the transit traffic According to estimates made by Finnish Customs, a total of 350 truckloads of cars will leave the Port of Kotka for Russia this week. In comparison, earlier this year the average number of cars shipped eastwards through Finland has been more than 200 truckloads a day.