As part of the First Caspian Forum, a meeting has been held by high-ranking transport officials from the coastal nations, which are the parties to the Agreement on Transport Cooperation between Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan.
Worked out on the initiative of President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, the document was submitted at the 2014 Fourth Caspian Summit in the city of Astrakhan, the Russian Federation and signed at the 2018 Fifth Caspian Summit in the city of Aktau, the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Speakers at the meeting highlighted that today each coastal nation is implementing large-scale projects aimed to build modern sea, road, rail and air transport infrastructure to ensure passenger and freight operations.
Optimum use of the existing transcontinental routes and creation of new international transport corridors in the Caspian Sea will spur further socio-economic development of the neighboring countries, increase their investment opportunities, and strengthen regional and interregional trade-economic, cultural-humanitarian relations, and tourism.
Undertaking massive projects designed to build modern infrastructure of universal significance, setting up sustainable logistics systems used by national transport operators, providing a wider spectrum of services will undoubtedly enhance the regional and interregional trade-economic relations.
Rapid tourism development opens up new vistas for the sector, in particular, with new destinations, itineraries, and cruises in the Caspian Sea to be on offer.This will accelerate the littoral states’ economic growth and improve the nations’ wellbeing.
Detailed discussions centered on making joint efforts to build necessary port infrastructure facilities and to expand the partnership.Each country, including Turkmenistan, has all necessary facilities to promptly transport goods, using intermodal routes between Europe, Asia and the Far East.
In this context, the opening of the International Turkmenbashi Seaport is seen as a landmark event.Making the most of its facilities will allow the littoral countries to take the cooperation on a new level, speeding up their integration into the international system of economic relations, and increasing Turkmenistan’s role in the continental multimodal transport services.
The meeting also focused on Turkmenistan’s transport infrastructure potential, specifics of large-size and heavy-weight cargo deliveries to the Caspian Sea region by different modes of transport, and transit operations to Central Asia via our country.
As noted, the International Seaport boasts necessary facilities to handle refrigerated containers and a 9,000-square-meter covered storage site.The terminal is capable of bringing our country to the fore of the region’s export-import freight operations.
The multimodal port is able to store and handle containerized air, road and rail freight (including freight loading and uploading operations).Thus, our country is making a major contribution to expanding international cooperation in the transport and communications sector the important segment of the world economy.
Summing up the meeting, the experts stated that much preparatory work had been done in all the key areas of cooperation in the Caspian Sea.The parties stressed the need for the littoral states to take necessary steps to finalize their national procedures and to bring the Agreement on Transport Cooperation into force.
The meeting culminated in the signing of the relevant document aimed to boost traditional relations between the region’s countries that have every possibility of forging the partnership in the transport sphere.