Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, June 30
By Huseyn Hasanov– Trend:
Kazakhstan has joined the Central Asia-Middle East (Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran-Oman) transport corridor project, the newspaper ‘Neutral Turkmenistan’ wrote June 30.
Agreement on the establishment of the international transport and transit corridor was signed in Ashgabat between the governments of Iran, Oman, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan April 25, 2011 at the level of foreign ministers.
The new corridor will allow the countries of Central Asia in the long term to be linked to the ports of the Persian and Oman gulfs via an optimal route. According to experts, Russia and China can also get access to new solvent markets, which could make the project even more economically attractive.
Participating countries, which are interested in cooperation, believe that the initiative was timely and will contribute to further progress and prosperity of each country in the region through expanding the volume of total trade and reducing the cost of cargo transit.
Prospects for cooperation in the fields of customs activity, transportation by road, rail and sea, as well as joint investments, are now being studied at the expert level.
Turkmenistan and Iran, with the participation of Kazakhstan in December 2014 completed implementation of a joint project to create a new North-South railway corridor.
The cargo can be freely transported to the countries of the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and Europe via this trade route. In total, the annual transportation volume will amount to 10-12 million tons of cargo, according to preliminary calculations.