BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 29. Recently we got several messages from Chinese companies that they seriously want to increase the transportation of cargos through the middle corridor, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said addressing the international conference under the motto “South Caucasus: Development and Cooperation”, Trend reports.
"We already started to receive cargos from China through the Caspian through the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad, but not in big volumes, because we clearly understood that China has diversified supply routes through different sources and we just tried to make our route more attractive. But, recently we got several messages from Chinese companies that they seriously want to increase the transportation of cargos through the middle corridor, as it is called in China, through Azerbaijan, the Caspian and Georgia either to Georgian ports or to the Turkish city of Kars. So, these are new opportunities for us and our transportation infrastructure is brand new. It is a brand new sea port, the biggest Caspian fleet among the Caspian littoral states and railroad. But, of course, if we think about dramatic increase of cargos, we need also to invest in expansion of our transportation handling potential, because all our projects were based on existing volumes of cargos and slowly growing volumes of cargos. But today we see the demand for dramatic growth of cargos. Therefore, instructions have already been given to corresponding governmental structures to give me a report about what we can do and how we can increase the capacity of our trade sea port, which has capacity now of 15 million tons and we can in a relatively short period of time increase it up to 25 million tons. Then, of course, the construction of new ferry boats and tankers in our Caspian shipping factory is also necessary to be able to transport all that volume though Azerbaijan. In other words, it is an absolutely new situation with new opportunities," the head of state said.