Baku, Azerbaijan, May 14
By Fakhri Vakilov- Trend:
Despite the fact that the total volume of foreign trade turnover of Turkic-speaking countries is $600 billion, the turnover of mutual trade between them today is only two percent, a representative of the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development of Kazakhstan told Trend in an interview.
“We must bring this figure up to 5-10 percent,” the source said.
The members of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking States (CCTS or the Turkic Council) are currently Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. The observer country is Hungary.
As part of the CCTS, meetings of the Council of the Heads of State, the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, the Committee of Senior Officials, the Council of Elders, as well as meetings of the heads and experts of the sectoral government bodies of member countries in the fields of economics, investment, customs, transport, education, tourism, information and etc. are held annually.
The population in CCTS member countries is a total of 115 million people.
The total national income of these countries reaches $1.2 trillion.
The representative of the ministry also noted that the active participation of Central Asian states in the formation of international transport corridors is due to the geographical position of the region and the desire to get "direct" access to world markets and become a hub that consolidates the flow of goods from China to Europe.
In order to realize their transit potential, the Central Asian states are conducting a set of measures aimed at modernizing and building transport corridors, which should have a significant effect.
“The developing domestic highways and railways, connecting various regions within countries contribute to economic growth and social stabilization of the state. The construction of transit routes through Central Asia stimulates regional integration, as it objectively makes states more interdependent in solving problems of an economic and political nature ” the representative said.
Diversification of export routes will allow Central Asian countries to increase the attractiveness of the region for international shippers and increase transit traffic.
Generally, the transformation of Central Asia into a continental transport hub solves both the issues of sustainable and consistent development of the states of the region, and the main geopolitical task - the preservation of military-political and socio-economic stability.
Noteworthy, the interests of the countries of Central Asia and most regional and extra-regional powers in the field of construction and modernization of the transport and logistics infrastructure coincide in this regard.
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