BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 13. Iran and India will sign a long-term 10-year agreement on the development of the Chabahar port in Sistan and Baluchistan provinces, southeast of Iran, Trend reports via the Iranian Ministry of Road and Urban Development.
The agreement will be signed by Iran's Minister of Roads and Urban Development, Mehrdad Bazrpash, and India's Minister of Ports, Maritime Affairs, and Waterways, Sarbananda Sonoval.
The document entails the provision of Chabahar port with equipment by the Indian IPGL Company.
According to the agreement, the Indian side will spend $120 million on the provision of equipment at the port of Chabahar and $250 million on the construction of the port's infrastructure.
To note, Chabahar port, located in the north of the Gulf of Oman in the Strait of Hormuz, is one of the most convenient ports for the countries of Afghanistan and Central Asia to reach the Indian Ocean.
India intends to use this port as part of the International North-South Corridor.
A memorandum of understanding was signed between Iran, India, and Afghanistan in 2016. According to the memorandum, Iran's Chabahar port is used for the trade of goods between India and Afghanistan. Under the memorandum, the operator of Chabahar port, India's IPGL company, will invest $85 million in this port.
Within the framework of the memorandum, two 140-ton cranes worth a total of $7.5 million were brought from India and installed in Chabahar port in the past few years. With the cranes, the annual loading and unloading capacity of the port reached 20 million tons.
An intergovernmental agreement signed between Russia, Iran, and India on September 12, 2000, laid the foundation for the INSTC. Generally, several countries have ratified the mentioned agreement (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, India, Iran, the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Russia, Tajikistan, Türkiye, Ukraine). The purpose of the corridor is to reduce the delivery time of cargo traveling from India to Russia, as well as to Northern and Western Europe (the delivery time on the current route is more than six weeks; it is expected to be three weeks via the INSTC).
The INSTC has three directions within Iran. The eastern direction is Turkmenistan and Central Asian countries; the middle direction is Russia and other countries across the Caspian Sea; and the western direction is Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, and Eastern European countries.
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