Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 6
By Maksim Tsurkov – Trend:
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey continue to optimize tariffs for transportation along the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, First Deputy Chairman of Azerbaijan Railways CJSC Alirza Suleymanov said Dec. 6 in Baku at a transport conference titled “Azerbaijan: Bridge to Eurasia.”
He said that at present, Azerbaijan is the leader in transport sector in the South Caucasus region.
“Over the past years, Azerbaijan has been rapidly developing in all spheres of economy, significant transformations have been taking place in the transport sector of the country, and the Azerbaijan Railways CJSC is actively involved in this process,” Suleymanov said.
He noted that economic development, as well as convenient geographical location of Azerbaijan, allows the country to implement major transport projects.
“Projects of the North-South and East-West transport corridors connecting China with Europe are the biggest and priority ones,” Suleymanov noted. “The BTK railway was launched in October as part of the East-West corridor. It is expected that by 2020, the turnover between China and Europe will exceed 300,000 containers per year, and Azerbaijan, through the BTK railway, will be involved in the global transport system.”
Suleymanov also spoke about the implementation of the International North-South Transport Corridor project and noted that the importance of Azerbaijan as a transport hub will continue to grow.
“The work on creation of conditions for increasing the transit potential will continue,” he said. “Azerbaijan will do everything possible to offer new logistics services in the transportation services market.”
The official opening ceremony of the BTK railway was held in Baku Oct. 30. The BTK railway was constructed on the basis a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement.
The railway’s peak capacity will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At an initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.
