TEHRAN, November 2. /TASS/. The first cargo-carrying operation via the North-South Transport Corridor in transit through Iran was a success, Russia’s Deputy Transport Minister Alexei Tsydenov told Tass on Tuesday.
The deputy minister led the Russian delegation to a session of the Russian-Iranian working group for transport cooperation, which ended in Tehran on Tuesday.
Tsydenov said test container haulage from India to Russia through Iran had proceeded in line with planned parameters. "We hope for the future development of this direction," he added.
"Our companies have studied all components of this route - its car, railway and sea sections," Tsydenov went on. "Work was done to find consignors in India and Russia interested exactly in this route of transportation," he said.
"Now we know the time of dispatch - it takes the cargo seven days to travel across Iran. This is not very quickly, but these are just first dispatches," he said, marking that work was in progress to reduce the delivery time.
The deputy minister also said a unified transportation document was needed, as a need to redraft them was a weak point of the project. He said work was in progress with China and Europe on a single rail waybill.
The idea to create a South-North international transport corridor was put forward in 1993. In 2000, an agreement was signed between Russia, India and Iran, the countries through which the transit route goes. The time of cargo delivery, in particular from India to Russia, is to reduce by half and will not exceed 30 days. Besides, the cost of cargo delivery is also expected be 30% cheaper.
Apart from that, Russia’s transport ministry offered the Iranian side to adopt GLONASS as a navigation system and presented several projects with the use of this technology. Among the, according to Tsydenov, are "monitoring of cargo shipments with the use of electronic seals with GLONASS satellite navigation." "It is a new technology which has already been tested on the transportation services market. It is used first to trace the cargo, and second, to ensure its safety as in cease of unsealing the electronic device transmits a signal," he said.
A major result of the working group meeting was a contract on the project for the electrization of the Garmsar-Inche Burun railway section. "The Iranian side confirmed its commitment to take effort to sign this contract as soon as possible. We expect it will take place in early December, at a meeting of the intergovernmental commission in Iran. We hope the Iranian side will be prepared for that too," the Russian official said.
Apart from that, Russia’s and Iran’s transport expert discussed a wide range of issues of cooperation in the areas of railway, sea-going, air and motor transport. Russian transport companies held their presentations.