BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jul. 10
By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:
Kazakhstan is working on the issue of launching regular ferry service between Kazakhstan’s Aktau port and the Iranian Caspian port, representative of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Industry and Infrastructural Development told Trend.
On Nov. 13, 2019, Kazakhstan joined the agreement on the establishment of an international transport and transit corridor between the governments of Iran, Oman, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The official said that the transport corridor project will allow attracting additional transit cargo through Kazakhstan and access the ports of the Persian Gulf.
“Kazakhstan sees the North-South corridor as one of the key directions in the development of transportation in the direction of India, the world's largest consumer market. On the other side, this includes transportation of Kazakh goods and services in the direction of the Northern Europe countries as well,” the ministry official said.
The trade development between Iran and China, Iran and the regions of the Urals, Siberia and the Far East of Russia through land routes also has great potential, and some of them pass through Kazakhstan and are also integrated into the North-South corridor, the official said.
“Kazakhstan has good experience in participating in development of transit corridors from China to Europe, as well as in direction of the Caucasus countries and Turkey. This positive experience is to be applied to the North-South corridor,” the official said.
Talking transport corridor development progress the official said that currently, the parties are working to increase the speed of goods and passengers transportation in order to optimize transport costs, improve the quality of transport service, and active work is underway to attract freight flows and organize container trains.
“Now, in order to attract freight flows to the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway, the most favorable tariff conditions have been established for transit traffic of ferrous metals, wood, coal, vegetable oil, grain cargo from Russia to the Iranian railway station, to Iran through the Kazakhstan’s Bolashak border station and then to third countries via transit through Iran, as well as for the transportation of large containers along the China-Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran route,” the official said.
However, the representative said, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on access through the territory of Turkmenistan, multimodal transportations began to actively develop in direction of Iran through Kazakhstan’s ports on the Caspian Sea.
“For this purpose, the issue of launching a regular ferry service between ports of Aktau and the Iranian Caspian port is being considered,” the representative said.
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