The railways of Georgia, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine have reached agreement on a single tariff for railway freight being transported from India to Europe through these countries. Levan Sulaberidze, the director of Trans Kavkasus Terminals (Georgia), announced this during the International Transport Week in Odesa held in June 1-3, the CFTS correspondent reports.
Sulaberidze stressed that the cost of transportation on this route is "historically low." For example, according to him, fees for some of these goods have already been abolished on the Iranian-Azerbaijani border. Asked by about the different track gauges in Georgia and Turkey, he told the participants in the 12th congress of the South-Eastern European Association of Freight Forwarding and Logistics Companies that transfers onto other bogies would be organized in Georgia.
Kostas Sandalcidis, the director of the Turkish division of the M&M Militzer & Munch company, noted the importance of such a project, given the number of unfavorable political factors in the region, namely the complex relations between Turkey and Armenia (the railway branch constructed between the two countries does not operate) and between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He described the lack of a fully-fledged railway link between Iran and Azerbaijan as another negative factor, in this case economic.
However, according to Sulaberidze, construction of a ferry between Iran’s and Azerbaijan’s Alat Amirabad is currently underway.
As the CFTS earlier reported, Ukraine has officially joined the Trans-Caspian international transport route. The relevant protocol was signed in Tbilisi on 17 May. "Ivan Fedorko signed the protocol on Ukraine's entry into the Trans-Caspian international transport route on behalf of Ukrzaliznytsia," Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelian said.
In addition, according to him, agreement was reached to reduce the complex rate for transportation of a 40-foot equivalent container (FEU) from the Izov station to the border with China (Dostyk) from USD 5,559 to USD 3,980.
As CFTS earlier reported, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Ukrzaliznytsia launched the trial run of a container train on the Ukraine-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Kazakhstan-China route, which is considered a branch of the New Silk Road, on on 15 January 2016. The train reached China on the sixteenth day (in the early hours of 31 January 2016). In the future, the delivery time is expected to be reduced to 10-12 days in one direction while the cost is expected to become comparable to costs on the China-Europe routes that pass through Russia.
