Tehran, Iran, July 23
Trend:
Iran Railways (RAI) is increasing its cooperation with regional countries and aims to exports its products.
Head of Islamic Republic of Iran Railways Saeed Rasouli talked about the cooperation in an interview with Trend.
"Currently, Iran Railways are negotiating with officials of Jordan railways who are very interested in developing relations with our production companies. It is expected that we exchange views about our requirements and capacities," he noted. "We also invited heads of railways of the regional countries to visit Iran and see our products. We hope that these visits would lead to contracts," he added.
"During the trilateral meeting between Iran, Iraq and Syria, I informed the head of Syria's railway about Iranian production companies. There were negotiations, and Iranian companies expressed readiness to renovate and reconstruct Syria's railway network," he said.
High-ranking officials from Iran, Syria, and Iraq have recently agreed to create a multimodal transport corridor as part of efforts to boost trade relations between the three countries.
"Recently, we have signed a protocol with Turkey so that our passenger trains can go to Van and Ankara and Iran's cargo trains can transport goods across Turkey. It has been also preliminary agreed to reduce tariffs to increase the cargo transportation," he said referring to negotiations with Turkey. "Some parts of the protocol are already implemented."
"There is also an article over expanding tourist trains with Turkey, which is currently being negotiated. According to the article, tourist trains will travel between two countries. This requires bilateral cooperation in the field of tourism field, and preliminary steps have been taken by related official organizations to establish tourism line," he said.
" Anzali-Astara Railway is under construction. The president has ordered to complete the railway by 2020. We will visit the railway in upcoming days," he said referring to latest updates of the project.
The head of Iran Railways Saeed Rasouli recently attended the International union of railways (UIC) conference where he held bilateral meetings with counterparts from Turkey, Jordan and Syria during the event. In particular, the official expressed Iran's readiness to export engineering services to these countries.
Iranian Railways will be hosting the 7th UIC conference in Tehran from November 11-13, 2019.