BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 4
By Klavdiya Romakayeva - Trend:
Deputy Prime Minister of Uzbekistan Sardor Umurzakov and Vice Prime Minister of the Kyrgyz Republic Erkin Asrandiev discussed the prospects for expanding investment, trade and transport and logistics partnership, and outlined specific goals of mutually beneficial cooperation, Trend reports referring to the Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade reports in Uzbekistan.
The parties noted the positive dynamics of growth in trade turnover.
Over the past three years, the mutual trade has grown almost fivefold, amounting to $818.4 million in 2019. In this connection, an agreement was reached on the adoption of coordinated measures to overcome the negative impact of the pandemic in order to bring the volume of mutual trade to $1 billion in the near future.
Special attention was paid to the issues of cooperation in the field of transport. It was noted that at the end of last year, the volume of rail freight traffic between the two countries increased by 10.7 percent and amounted to 1.47 million tons, and road freight traffic increased by 38.2 percent and amounted to 1.49 million tons.
The parties welcomed the launch of multimodal transportation along Uzbekistan - Kyrgyzstan - China corridor using vehicles on the section Andijan - Osh - Irkeshtam - Kashgar, which made it possible to achieve a significant reduction in cargo and optimize transport costs for carriers.
Taking into account the existing potential in this direction, the sides noted the promising to implement joint measures to expand the capacity of roads at border checkpoints and improve conditions for the transit of passengers, vehicles and goods, including through the digitalization of customs, sanitary, transport and border control. In this vein, opportunities will also be explored for creating joint logistics hubs for the organization of combined freight transport.
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