BAKU, Azerbaijan, Feb.13
By Sadraddin Aghjayev – Trend:
The Baku International Sea Trade Port is planned to be used as transit point for transportation of goods from Europe to China and back, Director General of the port Taleh Ziyadov said this week, Trend reports referring to a source in the port.
Ziyadov made the remark at an online meeting with local and foreign experts and scientists of the Central Asian Forum of the UK University of Cambridge on the topic ‘Prospects for Regional Development and Cooperation’,
According to him, transportation of goods in transit through the port is envisioned within the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the port, the Austrian ‘OBB Rail Cargo Group’ and the Netherlands ‘Venlo Logistics Hub’.
The first freight train from China has already arrived in Europe through the Baku port, and new freight trains are expected to be sent from Venlo (Netherlands) to China also through the port in the near future, added Ziyadov.
Besides, this week a container train from Turkey, transiting through the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway route, arrived at the logistics center of the Vorsino railway station in the Russian Kaluga region. The container train consisted of 16 units of 40-foot containers carrying dishwashers and gas stoves.
Furthermore, Rufat Bayramov, Permanent Representative (National Secretary) of the Permanent Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Commission TRACECA in Azerbaijan spoke about the organization’s projects.
According to Bayramov, Azerbaijan has bilaterally implemented several projects within the ‘International Road Transportation’ electronic system (e-TIR), the last of which was achieved with Iran.
"Now on the agenda there is the issue of pilot shipment between the four TRACECA countries (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan). Uzbekistan is already implementing these projects with Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan is also implementing it on bilateral basis," he said.
The permanent representative highlighted implementation of a draft of new agreement for obtaining a single transit permission of TRACECA, within which a special working group has been created.
"At the moment, there are certain limits on the carriage of goods, which are regulated by bilateral agreements on their transit," he added. "We are now trying to promote this project to get rid of unnecessary documentation among the countries, which will ultimately speed up the time for goods to be transported through the borders among TRACECA countries."
Another direction of TRACECA activity under a single transit agreement is the introduction of digital technologies.
According to Bayramov, at the moment, the participating countries are considering the possibility of using certain technologies, on the basis of which the single transit platform will be developed.
Besides, it’s planned to introduce a system for tracking the movement of goods (vehicle downtime) online in accordance with the TRACECA development strategy, and to carry out the appropriate work on the adoption and implementation of this project until 2026.
"Now we are working on the development of a new TRACECA map. In the near future we will have a new route map," he added.
Another important issue is the harmonization of border crossing procedures.
Bayramov noted that the main task of TRACECA here is to maximally adjust the recommendations of the countries to unify the issues of passing customs control.
"In this context, digitalization again comes to the fore," a permanent representative added. "Unfortunately, until today there is a lot of paperwork, which leads to big delays in seaports and border control points. The work that can be completed within 3-4 hours sometimes takes 15-16 hours," he summed up.
---
Follow the author on Twitter: @agdzhaev