BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 25. Baku International Sea Trade Port OJSC celebrated its sixth anniversary, Trend reports.
Established in Alat (some 70 km south of Baku) by Presidential Decree on March 18, 2018, the port has become one of the most important logistics centers linking East and West and plays the role of an important transport and logistics hub in the Eurasian region. Its current transshipment capacity is 15 million tons per year, with an expected growth rate of another 10 million tons per year.
Azerbaijan's national airline, AZAL, has started operating flights from Baku to another London airport, Gatwick. The flights will be carried out three times a week: on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. With the launch of the new route, AZAL will serve six weekly flights between Baku and London.
Heydar Aliyev International Airport is working in a reinforced mode during Novruz celebrations to ensure maximum comfort and safety for all passengers during the holidays (March 20–26). The reinforced work schedule is also aimed at the timely fulfillment of flights and a high level of service.
The State Statistics Committee (SSC) reported this week that from January through February 2024, the number of passengers carried by sea transport in Azerbaijan increased by 42.9 percent compared to the corresponding period of 2023 and amounted to 4,000 people.
The SCS also noted that during the first two months of 2024, the volume of passenger transportation in Azerbaijan totaled to 1.2 million passengers, which is 30.8 percent higher than the same period last year. According to the SCS data, 63,100 tons of cargo were transported by air transport in January–February 2024 (an increase of 22.5 percent). During the same period, 1.274 million tons of various cargoes were transported by sea transport (up 15.9 percent), with oil cargoes accounting for 50.5 percent. By road transport, 19.28 million tons were transported (an increase of 6.9 percent). Railroads transported 2.98 million tons of cargo in January–February 2024, an increase of 2.7 percent over January–February 2023. Of this volume of freight, 1.251 million tons were transit freight, a 15 percent increase over January–February 2023.
Overall, the volume of cargo transportation by all types of vehicles in Azerbaijan from January through February 2024 amounted to 35.19 million tons, which is 4.1 percent more than the indicator of January–February 2023. In the structure of cargo transportation, 75.6 percent came from private transport enterprises (5.3 percent growth to the figure of January–February 2023), and the rest came from state-owned companies. It should be noted that the positive growth dynamics are largely due to the development of the Middle Corridor.
Hikmet Hajiyev, Assistant to the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration, stated in an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN) this week that full utilization of the Middle Corridor will ensure further growth of China-Azerbaijan trade. "In such a project, which passes through the territories of different countries, the possibility of "one window" is crucial, especially for Chinese companies that would like to redirect their cargo transportation to the European market. We are already working with Kazakhstan and Georgia and would like to attract our Chinese friends," he said.
Kazakh Deputy Foreign Minister Roman Vassilenko said Trend in an exclusive interview this week that Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan play a key role in the success of the Middle Corridor. He recalled that over the past two years, the volume of cargo transportation along this route has more than tripled and reached 2.76 million tons in 2023. The diplomat is confident that this volume will continue to grow manifold over the next years due to the coordinated efforts of various states both inside and outside the region.
Vassilenko also noted that, through Kazakhstan, about 80 percent of land cargo flows between Europe and Asia. Recall that Kazakhstan passes through 13 international transport corridors, including 5 railroads and 8 roads. Over the past 10 years, about $30 billion has been invested in Kazakhstan's transport and logistics infrastructure, and in the coming years, almost $40 billion may be invested.
Besides the Middle Corridor, the EU has an interest in other transportation projects in which Azerbaijan may participate. Thus, this week in Brussels, Tomasz Poreba, a member of the European Parliament from Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) party, held a roundtable discussion on the new section of Via Carpathia, the most important highway corridor along the EU's eastern border on the North-South axis, connecting the Baltic Sea with the Aegean, Black, and Adriatic Seas. There is an idea to make a branch of the highway towards the South Caucasus as well.
Tomasz Poreba noted that the main corridor starting in Klaipeda and running through Kaunas, Bialystok, Lublin, Rzeszow, Kosice, Miskolc, Debrecen, Oradea, Lugoj, Kalafat/Konstantsa, Svilengrad, and Thessaloniki is the shortest north-south highway.
He recalled that Poland was the first to propose the construction of this international highway, and six other EU member nations (Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece) soon followed suit. Poreiba spoke on the next stretch of Via Carpathia, the Caucasus Road Corridor, which will provide direct access to the Baltic Sea from Turkey and the Caucasus republics (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia). Meanwhile, Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan Vagif Sadigov, who attended the meeting, emphasized that in terms of energy security, this new international road corridor is critical for the countries involved, and that connecting the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasus to the EU should be a strategic priority.
The Russian Ministry of Transport announced the same week, jointly with the transport departments of Asian states, the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding on the creation and development of the Belarus-Russia-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan ITC and the Memorandum of Understanding on the formation and development of the international multimodal transport corridor Russia-Caspian Sea-Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan, signed in November 2023 in Tashkent within the framework of the 1st SCO International Transport Forum.
Because the implementation of "green trends" in transportation is critical worldwide, various methods for increasing the decarbonization of this business are being tested. Indeed, in Azerbaijan, a group of scientists investigated carbon dioxide emissions when diesel fuel and compressed natural gas (CNG) were utilized as motor fuel in vehicles powered by SOCAR Petroleum. As a result, it was determined that CNG is now the most appealing option for decarbonizing Azerbaijan's transportation industry.
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