BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 30. The International Road Transport Union (IRU) intends to reduce waiting times at the borders of countries along the Middle Corridor, including Azerbaijan, using the TIR system, IRU President Radu Dinescu told Trend.
"TIR is a United Nations treaty that reduces border wait times by employing the TIR system. The electronic TIR system improves security and dependability from the standpoint of the state and road transport operators, as well as when employing the Electronic Consignment Note (ECMR)," he said.
"The ECMR is a document for each vehicle, so it would be extremely important to accept and use these digital documents for road transport, which again will enhance control, law enforcement, and safety for all parties involved," he said.
Dinescu underlined that the flow of commodities through the Middle Corridor has recently increased significantly.
"However, in order to benefit from this increase, it is crucial for all Middle Corridor countries to be able to accommodate this flow of goods and improve not only hard infrastructure, such as roads, ports, railways, etc., but also adopt the necessary soft measures, meaning moving towards procedures and digitization, which are extremely important for reducing waiting times and ensuring higher speed on this corridor," he went on to say.
"If Middle Corridor countries can do this in the shortest time, a significant part of this flow of goods will stay in this corridor even after the situation on the northern side improves in the coming years. Therefore, it's very important for not only Azerbaijan, which is doing significant work on infrastructure, but also neighboring countries to take the necessary measures," Dinescu added.
The Middle Corridor is a multilateral institutional development linking the containerized rail freight transport networks of China and the European Union through the economies of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Türkiye, and Eastern Europe. The multilateral, multi-modal transport institution links Caspian and Black Sea ferry terminals with rail systems in China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Türkiye, Ukraine, and Poland.
The Middle Corridor serves to increase freight traffic from China to Türkiye, as well as to European countries and in the reverse direction.
The block train running along this corridor delivers cargo from China to Europe in an average of 20–25 days. This is one of the main advantages of the transport corridor.