Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 18

By Ali Mustafayev – Trend:

The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route connects China with Western Europe, Kazakh Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary ambassador to Azerbaijan Beybit Isabayev told Trend.

“Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are important links of this route,” he said, adding that this route can be considered failed without them.

"Of course, the most important thing in our bilateral relations is the transit and transport potential of our countries,” he said. “Both countries have recently paid much attention to the development of the infrastructure of transit and transport logistics facilities.”

“We have expanded the capacity of Aktau and Alat ports,” he said. “We completed the first stage of the construction of the Kuryk port, modernized more than 2,000 kilometers of the railway, built new branches.”

“Five international railway routes and six international automobile routes pass through Kazakhstan,” he said. “One of them is the Caucasian route, which runs through Azerbaijan.”

"All these projects, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway are the key elements of one big project entitled the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route," Isabayev said.

Earlier, the ambassador also stressed that according to the forecasts, freight shipments in the East-West direction will increase fivefold till 2020. Thus, 1.3 million containers from China will be sent to the West, of which 300,000 containers will be transported along the Caucasus route, that is, through Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan amounted to $105.4 million in January-October 2017, $81.3 million of which accounted for export of Kazakhstan’s goods to Azerbaijan and $24.1 million - imports of goods from Azerbaijan.

Both countries have repeatedly stressed the discrepancy between mutual trade and real potential. In 2017, the countries announced their plans to increase the trade turnover by several times soon.