The head of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines
and Agriculture (ICCIMA) has stressed the need to increase efforts for
improving the country’s transit infrastructure in order to benefit from the
recent developments in the region, the ICCIMA portal reported.
Speaking at a meeting of the Mashhad Chamber of Commerce and
Industry’s Transport Committee, Gholam Hossein Shafeie mentioned the
competitiveness of the transit market in the region, saying, “Competitors are
creating alternative routes by spending huge amounts of money to replace Iran
in the transit market.”
Stating that Turkey has made several efforts to strengthen
the Trans-Caspian Corridor for transiting goods between East and West, he
added, “With the integration of the Trans-Caspian Corridor in the Silk Road
Project, this corridor will be connected with the China-Central Asia-West Asia
corridor that passes through Iran.”
Shafeie further referred to the recent changes in the world
including the war between Russia and Ukraine, saying, “In this period, due to
the change in the global transport routes, new opportunities have been provided
for Iran and we should take full advantage of such opportunities.”
The Islamic Republic has been taking serious measures for
the development of its railway network as well as its ports and shipping
infrastructure in order to encourage more countries to join the project.
Using
the capacities of the International North-South Transit Corridor (INSTC), Iran
will be able not only to expand the volume of trade with Russia and the
countries of the region, it can also gain a huge share of the mentioned
countries’ annual transit.
Currently, Russia has proposed to take part in some railway
projects in Iran in order to accelerate the development of the Islamic
Republic’s railway network along the mentioned route.
The row
between Europe and Russia over the Ukraine war, which resulted in harsh
sanctions being imposed on the country made Russia look for new ways for
distributing its goods across the world, especially in Asia and mainly through
the INSTC.
According
to official data, one of the major advantages of INSTC is that the cost of
transporting goods through this corridor is cheaper by 30%. It also halves the
time it takes to transport Indian goods to Russia via the Suez Canal.
Iran can use this transit route to distribute European
commodities in the shortest possible time and at a lower cost than other routes
to the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.
