ASTANA, Kazakhstan, September 18. The volume of railway transportation between Kazakhstan and the countries of the Organization of Turkic States has increased, said Deputy Chairman of the Board of Kazakhstan Railways (KTZ) Anuar Akhmetzhanov at the second meeting of the heads of railway administrations of the OTS states in Istanbul, Trend reports.
Thus, since the beginning of the year, the volume of railway transportation between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan has increased by 12 percent, Türkiye by 28 percent, Azerbaijan by 14 percent, and Uzbekistan by 27 percent.
"To ensure the passage of increasing transit freight traffic, KTZ is working to expand infrastructure capacity. The necessary measures are being taken to further increase freight traffic both along already established routes and to develop new promising projects," he said.
According to him, the second track of the Dostyk-Moyynty railway section is being built, and work is underway to implement projects for the construction of the Darbaza-Maktaaral, Bakhty-Ayagoz lines, and bypass route around Almaty.
"Within three years, KTZ plans to build over 1,200 km of railways. This will significantly increase the country’s transport potential and increase the efficiency of the transportation of export products," he added.
KTZ plans to transport about 29 million tons of cargo through the KTZ network in September of this year (within the main plan). In August, more than 26 million tons were transported through the KTZ network, which is 8 percent higher than the same indicator of the previous year.
The volume of cargo transportation by rail in Kazakhstan amounted to 145.9 million tons for the period from January to July 2023. The volume of coal amounted to more than 60 million tons, which is 40 percent of all transportation through the KTZ. In addition, 18.3 million tons of solid fuel and 41.7 million tons of coal for domestic consumption were exported from Kazakhstan.