BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 5. Azerbaijan’s exclusive location creates huge opportunities for the country to become a regional transit and transport hub, the World Bank said (WB), Trend reports via the Bank’s Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD).
“The development of international transport and transit corridors passing through Azerbaijan is seen as one of the competitive advantages of the country and an opportunity for diversification of the economy and greater spatial and social inclusiveness,” the report said.
According to the WB, the International North-South Transport Corridor, for example, which a 7,200 kilometers long multimodal corridor that links India, Iran, and other Asian countries to Russia and Northern Europe, can contribute to Azerbaijan’s competitiveness, resilience, and access to international markets.
As the SCD noted, global supply chain disruptions amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have increased Azerbaijan’s importance as a regional transportation and logistics hub.
Azerbaijani government has already improved such areas as “transport facilitation, supply chain digitalization and border management improvements, institutional and operational reforms among state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in railways and shipping, capital investments to expand corridor capacity and reliability and government sponsorship of strategic projects, increased private sector presence in ports and warehousing, and legal reforms to improve the investment climate and the quality and availability of logistics services,” the report said.
“Rebuilding the infrastructure of the conflict-affected areas and restoring the connectivity of these areas with the rest of the country as well as the reconstruction of communication lines with Armenia are paramount tasks for the government and will absorb a large portion of the country’s resources in the years to come. Increased private capital mobilization, including through public-private partnership modalities may be critical to building modern, sustainable, and reliable infrastructure, although further efforts are required to design a comprehensive public-private partnership framework and equip professionals who work on such partnerships with essential skills in assessing the associated fiscal implications and managing fiscal risks,” the WB concluded.
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