Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25
By Elmira Tariverdiyeva – Trend:
Such distinguished guests as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani are expected to visit Azerbaijan in early August. The presidents will discuss joint projects, as well as bilateral relations with their Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev.
And today it is clear that the program of the presidents’ visits to Azerbaijan will be very useful and rich.
Of course, the North-South promising railway project linking the Middle East and South Asia, as well as the Baltic Sea region will be one of the main topics of discussion.
All three oil countries, which experienced the negative impact of falling energy prices, are interested in the development of non-oil and gas component of the economy and the search for new common ground in relations among Baku, Moscow and Tehran.
One of the points of discussion is the North-South project, which will give a significant impetus to the effective development of the economies of all three countries.
By the way, this project will also be beneficial for other countries, located along this railway route.
In terms of the project’s geography, it is clear that namely North-South project will soon become a transport axis of the whole region, the main hub of which is Azerbaijan. This unique project will bring together all the necessary components, such as financing, freight traffic, systems of logistics and information that will make it one of the most convenient and separate systems of freight and passenger traffic.
It is difficult to overestimate the economic importance of this transportation project: becoming acquainted with the preliminary indicators of the railway’s capacity makes it clear that the project will not only pay for itself, but also become an important factor in strengthening the economy of each country. It is planned to transport five million tons of cargo via the corridor only at the initial phase and more than 10 million tons of cargo – in the future.
Perhaps, Armenia will be the only country in the region to suffer from the implementation of the North-South project.
Currently, Tehran tries to minimize the consequences of long standing economic sanctions and is actively involved in the most interesting projects and initiatives in the region.
It is obvious that the transportation corridor running to the north is a very important route for Iran, as it will allow the country to enter the northern markets to which Tehran didn’t have access for many years.
Given that Tehran takes loans from Baku for construction of some sections of the North-South corridor running through Iran’s territory, it is obvious that it will abandon the plans for construction of a railway to Yerevan which is isolated from two of four neighbors and is unstable from the economic and political point of view.
In other words, the North-South project will not only bring great economic benefits to the region, but will undoubtedly affect the geopolitics of South Caucasus and the relations of the three countries with other states of the region.
---
Elmira Tariverdiyeva is the head of Trend Agency's Russian news service