ASTRAKHAN, October 25. /TASS/. Iran’s ambassador to Moscow Kazem Jalali has underscored the he potential cargo flow of the eastern branch of the North-South International Transport Corridor.
"Currently, one branch of the transport corridor remains unfinished, we must make efforts to use this branch - the eastern one," he said speaking at the International Transport Corridor North-South forum that opened in Astrakhan on Wednesday.
"The eastern branch of the North-South ITC is a route from the Persian Gulf from Iran to Turkmenistan, then to Kazakhstan and ultimately to the Russian Federation. This route has now been completed, and, as my friends in Iran say, the potential for transporting goods along this route is 15 million tons of cargo," he said.
The diplomat believes that the branch can already be used more effectively than now.
"We can set a goal of transporting 1-1.5 million tons or more," he said.
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.
The international forum North-South ITC is taking place in Astrakhan from October 25 to 26. The event brought together more than 150 companies from Iran, Pakistan, Oman, the UAE, India, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Belarus and other countries. The event is held with the assistance of the government of the Astrakhan region, the RusIranExpo Group of Companies, and the Caspian International Integration Club North-South.