Tehran, Iran, Feb.14
Trend:
Iran's geopolitical location is creating good opportunities to boost its air transit, by means of cargo exports or passenger transfer.
The director general of economic evaluation office at the Ministry of Road and Urban Development Mohsen Sadeghi discussed Iran's achievements in transit and transportation sector in an interview with Trend.
"Iran's transit in 2005 was 5 million tons of cargo and the share of roads in the country's transit was 80 percent," Sadeghi said. "There have been ups and downs, and the major transit accomplishment was during 2014-2015, that increased the transit volume to 13.5 million tons, but it declined in 2018 due to sanctions and issues with oil and infrastructure."
He went on to add that whenever the neighboring countries face conflict and crisis, Iran is secure and oil companies try to use Iran for oil transit.
"Until the past two years, major part of Iraq's oil was transported through Iran's western borders and exported via the Imam Khomeini Port," he said. "In fact, in the past decade Iran had good transit development but to sustain this growth and use the geopolitical potential, there should be more efforts by government and the unions."
Speaking about the air transit, Sadeghi said that it was expected that the Imam Khomeini Airport would have a considerable role in the air transit and transfer flights, for example flights from South East and East Asia to Europe.
"Unfortunately, the potential wasn't used, since Dubai Airport and Istanbul Ataturk Airport have created these conditions," he explained.
"During the Qatar blockade, Qatar Airways used Iran's transit routes. This is an example that should be used for cooperation in airspace," Sadeghi said.
"Compared to the last decade, the number of flights that operate through Iran air space has increased from 8,000 to 450,000 flights a year,", he added.