After the railroad had been built through the mountains of the Southern Urals in 1888–1892, the economic ties between Ufa and Siberian regions began to develop rapidly. Loads of Siberian grain poured westward to the European Russia markets through Ufa, and even the Chelyabinsk tariff wall could not hold it back. Ufa is located west of the Southern Urals, and the Trans-Ural cereals and the Siberian flour, produced by the mills in Chelyabinsk and Miass, entered the Ufa market without hindrance, creating competition for local producers. At the same time, starting from the early 1890s, caravans with Kyakhta (Chinese) tea, which used to have travelled to Irbit, went to the nearest railway station. From there tea was exported to Ufa that turned into a large centre of tea trade in Imperial Russia. The network of branches of the Volga-Kama Commercial Bank, established by the early 20th century, provided fast money transfers from Ufa to the main economic centres of Siberia and the Far East. The scope of transfers exceeded one million roubles in the 1900s. The main trading partners of Ufa in Siberia were Irkutsk, Kurgan, Omsk, and Tyumen. The last round of establishing the economic ties between Ufa and Siberia and the Far East took place during World War I. Provand for Ufa was purchased there.