Protocol signed on South-West corridor project (PHOTO)

Baku, Azerbaijan, June 19

By Maksim Tsurkov – Trend:

Azerbaijan, Iran, Georgia, Ukraine and Poland have signed a final protocol following the meeting on the South-West Transport Corridor project.

The document was signed by heads of railway authorities of the five countries – Javid Gurbanov, Saeed Mohammadzadeh, Mamuka Bakhtadze, Wojciech Balczun and Krzysztof Maminski.

The protocol envisages expanding cooperation opportunities on the South West route in order to optimize cargo transportation and increase transit capacity.

Under the document, the coordination work between the five countries’ railways on the South-West corridor was assigned to Azerbaijan Railways CJSC.

The Coordination Committee, under which a working group will be created, will deal with the issues of strategic importance and prospects of the corridor development. The working group will be based in Tehran.

The protocol said that a Coordination Committee meeting on the South-West corridor will be held in Odessa in September.

Along with the Trans-Caspian and North-South corridors, the South-West corridor is of great importance for Azerbaijan. The South-West corridor is supposed to run from India to Europe through the Persian Gulf, Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Black Sea. At an initial stage, it is planned to transport 10 million tons of cargo via this route with the possibility of increasing the transportation volume by several times in the future.

An agreement on the South-West corridor was signed in 2016 by Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Ukraine in Baku. The corridor will make it possible to slash the time of cargo transportation from India to Europe by two or three times.