ASTANA, November 27. /TASS/. Russia and Kazakhstan are working on a broad range of promising projects, including the eastern branch of the North-South international transport corridor that passes through Kazakhstan, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an article for the Kazakhstanskaya Pravda daily, published ahead of his visit to Astana.

"There is a whole range of promising industrial projects and initiatives in other areas of economic cooperation as well. I would like to mention, for example, the ongoing work to expand the eastern branch of the North-South international transport corridor that passes through Kazakhstan, and the creation of the Baiterek space rocket complex at the Baikonur Cosmodrome using the Russian Soyuz-5 rocket carrier," Putin wrote.

The intergovernmental agreement for the creation of a multimodal North-South transport corridor was signed by Russia, India and Iran in 2000. Subsequently, the list of parties to the agreement expanded to 14. The goal of the project is to direct flows of Europe-bound cargo traffic originating in India, Iran and the Persian Gulf states through Russian territory to markets in Europe. Compared to the maritime route through the Suez Canal, the North-South corridor cuts the overall distance by more than half, thus reducing the time and cost of transportation. Currently, the project combines several different transport systems of various participating countries.