BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 25
By Nargiz Ismayilova – Trend:
The reconstruction of the Sarpi border checkpoint on the Georgian-Turkish border has led to positive results in simplifying the border crossing procedures, which has been also indicated in the reports of the UN committees, Secretary General of the Permanent Secretariat of the IGC TRACECA Asset Assavbayev told Trend.
“The border crossing time was also reduced, which takes no more than five minutes,” Assavbayev added. “TRACECA member-states are actively working to simplify the border crossing procedures by increasing the throughput of checkpoints and implementing the information technologies.”
"One of the most striking examples confirmed by international organizations is the Sarpi checkpoint on the Georgian-Turkish state border,” Assavbayev added. “Moreover, the principles of a single window, risk assessment systems, electronic information and pre-declaration, an online payment system, others have been introduced at the borders of the TRACECA member-states. All this greatly reduces the customs clearance time at the borders."
“Today the Permanent Secretariat is working to assess bottlenecks at the border crossings to further harmonize the activity of checkpoints along the entire corridor,” secretary general added.
“As for the role of the corridor in the development of transit cargo transportation between Europe and Asia, first of all, I would like to stress the launch of a container train, which was running from China to Europe in November 2019,” Assavbayev said. “A train with 42 containers loaded with electronic goods was running from China to the Czech Republic by transit through Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia.”
“At the same time, the container train from China to Turkey, consisting of 41 containers with various consumer goods, was also launched this year,” the secretary general said. “The travel time was 16 days."
“The work is underway to develop train trips between Europe and Asia,” Assavbayev said. “The launch of a regular container service will create a competitive route in the future. The ongoing work allowed achieving double growth in 2019 in terms of the volume of cargo transported by container trains (30,000 containers in 2019, 15,000 containers in 2018).”
“As for cargo transportation by vehicles, I would like to emphasize once again the role of a single transit permit, which is currently under consideration by the countries,” secretary general said. “We hope that in the near future the introduction of this permit in e-form along with the work to harmonize the activity of checkpoints will increase cargo transportation through the corridor and attract additional cargoes."
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