India will work with Iran and Russia to operationalize the North-South Corridor, India’s Commerce and Industry Minister said, IRNA reports an Indian daily.
Suresh Prabhu said that the country intends to cooperate with Iran and Russia to activate the North-South Corridor, the Business Standard wrote.
Prabhu, during a meeting with a Russian business delegation, said “India, Russia and Iran will hold a trilateral meeting on the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) on November 23 to make the 7,200-km-long ship, road, and rail route operational soon.”
He stressed: 'all issues may be resolved in order to operationalize the route as early as possible'.
Prabhu said that the corridor is an important initiative taken by India, Russia and Iran to promote transport cooperation and to enhance connectivity with central Asian countries.
'The INSTC is the shortest multimodal transportation route linking the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf via Iran to Russia and North Europe,' the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in the statement.
'The estimated capacity of the corridor is 20 to 30 million tons of goods per year and will reduce time and cost by 30 percent to 40 percent,' it added.
Russia has invested $1.2 billion in India between 2000 and 2017 mainly in oil and gas, defense equipment supplies, power and energy and large-scale infrastructure projects.
In 2017, total trade between India and Russia was at $10.13 billion.