An official from Iranian Railways (RAI) explained the ongoing plans of RAI to develop and completion of North-South International transport corridor (INSTC).
“We all know that North-South Corridor was defined seventeen (17) years ago by agreement of Iran, India and Russia. At present, cargos are transported to Europe through Suez channel by sea route. Of course I may tell that because of Yemen relating problems, insurance cost of cargo transport has been increased in this route”, the Gen. Director of RAI’s Department of Int. Affairs said during deliver of his speech at The INSTC Conference, Mumbai.
“For construction of the missing link we have three (3) sections. Astara-Astara section with the cost of sixty (60) Million Dollars; Astara route in Azerbaijan is complete up to the border of Iran. Construction of bridge over Astara Chai River is already finished. Construction of Astara route in Iran will be finished soon. We need 4 terminals to construct: container, Oil, grain and general cargo terminals. The terminals are under construction by Azerbaijan.
The second section is Qazvin-Rasht, 163 km, this route has 95% physical progress and the remaining 5% will be finished after 3 months.
For building Rasht-Astara section, 162 km, we need 1 Billion Dollar, 500 Million for land purchasing and 500 Million for construction. This route will be built by investment of a foreign party and we are negotiating with Azerbaijan and this negotiation has a good progress, Nazari added on explain of the current condition of INSTC”, he added.
The representative of RAI at INTSC Conference explained the latest activities and attempts of RAI to complete this route and emphasized: other actions for the corridor management are to make it economic and to have an Integrated Corridor Management (ICM), so that we could manage North-South corridor as a combined system. In addition, cargo owners and freight forwarders shall have access to the corridor data through website: cargo volume, type of cargos, origin and destination of cargo, tariffs, timetable, and other data that could be easily available. My clear proposal is to have a common management for operation.
LR/PR
