MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/. The parties of the North-South international transport corridor project are discussing the construction of a highway along the Caspian Sea with the access to the Indian ocean, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin on Tuesday. He was speaking at the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament.

"The North-South route implies a bypass of the Caspian Sea from the west and from the east. From the west we have practically agreed on the railway, we are discussing [construction of] a road. But we have enormous potential, communication with Central Asia via existing roads with access to the Indian Ocean through Iran," he said.

Khusnullin stressed that the road communication development project within the North-South corridor does not require capital investments. In addition, the development of the highway with other countries continues, he added.

Earlier, Khusnullin reported that the total investment for the development of the transport infrastructure of the North - South international transport corridor will be about 280 billion rubles ($3.08 bln).

The intergovernmental agreement on the creation of a multimodal North-South transport corridor was signed by Russia, India and Iran in 2000. Later, the list of participants expanded to 14. The goal of the project is to attract the transit of cargo flows from India, Iran and the Persian Gulf countries through Russian territory to Europe. Compared to the sea route through the Suez Canal, the distance is more than halved, which reduces the time and cost of transportation. Now the project combines several different transport systems of individual states.