BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 15. Azerbaijan is working to strengthen the transport infrastructure and investing significant resources in this, the Minister of Digital Development and Transport of Azerbaijan Rashad Nabiyev said, Trend reports.
Nabiyev made the remark during a multilateral meeting on the Project for simplifying transit customs procedure along the Trans-Caspian International "East-West" Middle Corridor (Trans-Caspian International Route) using the "Single Window" principle.
According to him, ASCO (Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company) and the Port of Baku are the largest maritime structures in the Caspian region.
"Besides, the Silk Way airline is also the largest cargo airline. Last year, the growth in transit cargo transportation amounted to 75 percent (to 11 million tons). We are working to increase the cargo flow through the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) to five million tons, and it’s planned to complete the design of the second phase of the construction of the Baku port by October of this year," the minister noted.
Nabiyev also noted that today the unloading of one vessel has been reduced from 12 to four hours.
"Our transport infrastructure is practically ready for integration with port, customs and other structures. To date, we have already established similar work with colleagues from Georgia and Kazakhstan, which allowed us to significantly reduce the delivery time of goods," the minister said.
He also said that the cost of delivery of one container from China through Georgia to Azerbaijan was reduced from $5,000 to $3,200 and this cost will remain fixed for the next three years.
"Moreover, the Azerbaijani side, together with Boston Consulting, is working on the digitalization of customs procedures," Nabiyev added.
The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) starts from Southeast Asia and China, runs through Kazakhstan, the Caspian sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia and further to European countries. TITR aims to coordinate interaction of all the participants of transportation of goods and containers along the route from Asia to Europe and in the reversed direction.
