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Azerbaijani, Russian experts highlight economic perspectives of North-South strategy

Commentary Materials 3 July 2020 15:15 (UTC +04:00)
Azerbaijani, Russian experts highlight economic perspectives of North-South strategy

BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 3

By Nargiz Ismayilova - Trend:

The formal direction of freight traffic is not so important as the coherence of economic cooperation with the participation of Azerbaijan and its partner countries, as was noted in the report on “Azerbaijan after the Pandemic: Development Scenario (Economy, Politics)” prepared by the head of special projects of the Caspian Expert Club, Deputy Director General of Trend News Agency Gulnara Mammadzade and Russian economist Alexander Karavayev, Trend reports.

"For example, the volume of cargo transportation from Russia to Azerbaijan by different vehicles reaches 8 million tons (6.24 million tons by rail). Moreover, most of the Russian cargo is transited not via Iran, but through Turkey,” the report said. “But these deliveries are also included into the “North-South” conception. In particular, Russian coal, wheat, and industrial wood can, through investments within individual contracts, become trunk groups of goods along with Azerbaijani oil transported to India [participant of the International North-South Transport Corridor project].”

According to the report, in early 2020, India doubled its budgetary funding for the Iranian port of Chabahar (up to $14 million per year).

“In January 2020, for the first time in 79 years, feed corn was sent from Volgograd [Russian city] via the Volga River [in Russia] to Iran, which was made possible as a result of climate warming and the lack of ice on the river. Moreover, 53 ships were sent from the Volgograd region last year to Iran, Turkey and Israel. In Volgograd (in place of the former Soviet Khimprom plant) a methanol plant will be opened by 2022 (funded by Gazprom, Rusnano, Mitsubishi, based on the Haldor Topsoe catalysis). Export is also planned to be carried out along the Volga.”

“One of the clear evidences of the North-South strategy’s importance is the establishment of the Directorate of International Transport Corridors (by the Russian Government), designed to provide expert and analytical support for the project (a decision within the Complex of Measures for the Development of the Transit Potential of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), approved on February 14, 2020 by First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Belousov)," the report said.

The report also touched upon the corridor’s Russian section.

“Of the entire group of projects receiving priority funding in the framework of [Russia’s] national project entitled “Plan for the main infrastructure modernization” (these are six to seven projects in the country), three are actually components of INSTC. First of all, the Russian route R-217 (the Caucasus Highway) on the section in Dagestan, which is connected to the new highway extending up to Baku (its financing was transferred from 2022 to 2020).”

“This year it is proposed to put into operation an overpass through the railway in the Saratov region on the R-228 Syzran-Saratov-Volgograd highway, financing for which will increase by 481 in 2020 one million rubles. The budget for work on sections of the M-10 Scandinavia highway from St. Petersburg through Vyborg to the border with Finland will grow by 500 million - up to 4.4 billion rubles in 2021," the report concluded.

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