PremiumWeekly review of key events in Azerbaijan's transport sector

BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 8. Romania's Energy Minister, Romanian co-chairman of the Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation with Azerbaijan Sebastian-Ioan Burduja described Azerbaijan as an important "bridge" between the Caspian and Black Seas on the way of cargo transportation from Asia to Europe at a meeting in Baku on April 1, Trend reports.

He noted that the development of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Corridor (TITR) is very important given the current difficult realities in the context of the delivery of goods from Asia to Europe and in the opposite direction.

Romania offered Azerbaijan to accelerate the organization of multimodal transportation of products from Central Asian countries via the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Black Sea to the port of Constanta, as Secretary of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure of Romania Adrian Gheorghe Fogis informed on the results of his visit to Baku. Baku and Bucharest are also discussing the opening of direct air service.

Heydar Aliyev International Airport reported that the airport served more than 1.464 million passengers from January through March this year, which is 38.2 percent more than in the corresponding period of 2023. During this period, this indicator amounted to 1.058 million people.

It also became known that Ural Airlines will launch regular direct flights to Baku from Zhukovsky Airport on April 26. According to the airline, flights on the route Zhukovsky - Baku will be operated twice a week, on Fridays and Saturdays.

Russian airline IrAero has resumed flights from Ufa airport to Baku since April 4. According to the airline, flights on the Ufa-Baku route will be performed on Thursdays on Superjet-100 airplanes.
Baku held talks with the Russian Federation at various levels in the first week of April regarding the activation of transportation.

Thus, on April 4, Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Petr Gorodov noted at the five-sided meeting of senior officials of the Prosecutor General's Offices of the Caspian littoral states that the development of the North-South transport corridor requires the active cooperation of the Caspian countries.

First Deputy Chairman of the Committee for Industrial Policy, Innovations, and Trade of St. Petersburg Alexander Sitov told Trend following the talks in Baku that Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation have intensified work on the development of different segments of the international transport corridor (ITC) "North-South". According to him, part of the ITC route goes through Azerbaijan on land (roads and railroads) and along the Caspian Sea, and Azerbaijan and Russia will work out cooperation zones.

The Russian Ministry of Transport is striving to increase the efficiency of the use of the North-South International Transport Corridor. For this purpose, measures are being taken to eliminate limiting areas on the approaches to seaports and develop the infrastructure of inland waterways, roads, railroads, and state border crossing points.

The Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) forecast in early April that by 2030, cargo traffic along the North-South International Transport Corridor (ITC) will increase by almost 60 percent by the 2023 level and reach 30 million tons per year. In 2023, 19 million tons of cargo passed through the North-South ITC - three percent of all international cargo transported in Eurasia.

The EDB also believes that the rapid growth of the Eurasian region's trade with China requires modernization and the construction of transport and logistics infrastructure. Among the main areas for investment are routes from China to the EAEU and Europe, as well as corridors connecting China with Türkiye (the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, or Middle Corridor).

According to the analysts of this bank, new routes and border crossings from Russia to China (the Eastern Polygon), as well as other latitudinal initiatives, are needed. The EDB also believes that the growth of trade in the Eurasian region will stimulate a manifold increase in the number of multi-disciplinary centers for transshipment, picking, processing, and storage, i.e., a broad development of the logistics sector.

Speaking in the Russian State Duma with a report, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin stated that based on the plan approved by the Russian government to create a civilian fleet of 1.7 thousand ships by 2035, construction has already started on 300 ships and contracts for 178 ships have been signed. In his opinion, the approved plan for the civilian fleet will allow shipbuilders and manufacturers of ship equipment and components to plan orders.

Baku on April 2 also hosted talks on shipbuilding between Russia and Azerbaijan.
Thus, Russia's trade representative in Azerbaijan, Ruslan Mirsayapov, noted that last year Russia and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of shipbuilding. Shipbuilding enterprises are in constant interaction, and projects are being prepared to attract the capacity of Baku Shipyard for Russian orders.

Additionally, on April 2, it became known that the Russian company Valcom agreed with Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company (ASCO) on the modernization of sensors and meters for different purposes on half of the ASCO ships. Deputy General Director of Valcom Aleksei Filippov told Trend exclusively about the results of negotiations in Baku.

During the first week of April, ASCO announced the volume of transportation for the first quarter of 2024. Thus, in January–March, tankers transported 960,796 tons of crude oil and oil products. Ferries transported 8,847 railcars in the first quarter. Ferry ships transported 9150 vehicles (8535 of them trucks and 615 cars). Dry cargo ships transported 154,988 tons of cargo on the Caspian Sea.

The main ASCO transportation route goes through the Caspian Sea along the Middle Corridor. Deputy Minister of Digital Development and Transport of Azerbaijan, Samir Mammadov, named the tariff and terms of transportation of containers from China through the Caspian Sea, Baku, to the Black Sea ports of Georgia. According to Mammadov, for 40-foot containers from the Kazakh-Chinese border to the port of Batumi, there is a fixed tariff of $3,100 per container. Travel time along this entire stretch is 15 days, up from 36 days in the past.

The development of the Middle Corridor is extremely important for the EU and Spain as a member of the European Union. The Spanish Foreign Ministry told Trend, adding that this corridor is the key to Eurasian trade and allows the transportation of goods of all kinds, in particular energy resources, which are important for Europe.

Uzbekistan's Ambassador to the United States, Furkat Sidikov, said at the Caspian Policy Center (CPC) event in Washington that Azerbaijan is becoming a transit hub for Uzbekistan thanks to the Middle Corridor. The ambassador noted that the United States supports this project.

Besides, it became known that CJSC "Azerbaijan Railways" from January through March 10 times increased the transit of oil cargoes from Kazakhstan and Central Asian countries (CA). The volumes of transit oil and oil product transportation increased 10 times compared to January–March 2023 and amounted to 20,771 tons.

Azerbaijani Railways also reported that from January through March 2024, it transited 698,178 tons of cargo along the Middle Corridor, a 10 percent increase over the same period in 2023. The growth was achieved due to increased transit of urea (fertilizer) and fuel oil from Central Asian countries, including Kazakhstan, through Azerbaijan.

The International Road Transport Union (IRU) representative on freight and transit issues, Tatiana Rey-Bellet, also spoke about the importance of the Middle Corridor during the week. According to her, the Middle Corridor (across the Caspian Sea) and the Southern Corridor (running from the Baltic States through Bulgaria to Türkiye) have become the most important trade routes influencing global transport and trade dynamics. They allow the efficient combination of different modes of transport and are important given the Suez Canal issue.

She also drew attention to the fact that Türkiye is increasing the transportation of containerized cargo on multimodal routes through the Caspian Sea, as well as through Iran and Asian countries, preferring them in terms of delivery time compared to ocean delivery. Transportation of containers from Lianyungang (China) to Turkey or EU countries through these corridors currently takes from 13 to 23 days, while the sea route through the Suez Canal takes from 35 to 45 days.

Chairman of the Board of Azerbaijan Railways, CJSC Rovshan Rustamov, announced on April 6 plans to modernize Azerbaijani Railways by 2030, including the development of the Middle Corridor.
This week, there was important transportation news from Kazakhstan.

Thus, it became known that the JSC "Aviation Administration of Kazakhstan" (AAK), together with the Civil Aviation Committee (CAC) and the Embassy of Kazakhstan in the US, with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, signed an agreement with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to conduct a preliminary International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA).

Therefore, it also became known that on May 13–17, in Kazakhstan, there will be a plenary meeting of the Joint Committee of Aviation Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Aerial Systems (Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems, JARUS). The event, with the participation of representatives of the organization's members from 65 countries, international organizations, and representatives of Central Asian republics, will be dedicated to the promotion of harmonized regulations in the field of unmanned aviation.

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