The North-South freight volumes soar

The transportation via the international North-South transport corridor (INSTC) has increased by 54% since the beginning of this year versus 2022. The corridor is seeing growth in all of the three directions: western, central and eastern routes. The intermodal shipping volume has also increased, Oleg Belozerov, director general and Russian Railways board chairman, said at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At the beginning of May, Sergey Pavlov, first deputy head of Russian Railways, noted that in 2023 transportation volumes are expected to increase by 12 times reaching 1 million tons of cargo along the eastern route of the international corridor.

As part of developing the international North-South transport corridor (INSTC), the renovations of the Tikhoretsk railway junction bound for the Azov-Black Sea basin were completed just now, resulting in additional freight flows along the corridor. Cargo transit in January-May increased up to 54% compared to last year, said the head of the holding company. The increase in transportation volumes is noticeable in all directions, including intermodal transportation, he added.

On top of that, Oleg Belozerov spoke at the 78^th meeting of the “Council on Rail Transport of CIS Member States” recognizing the outcome of the joint efforts by Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to develop the eastern route of INSTC. The head of Russian Railways also announced participants’ hopes to create favorable conditions for freight owners and suggested that the Council’s platform be used to establish corridor development cooperation mechanisms.

During the meeting, Oleg Belozerov underscored the positive nature of the measures that drive the route’s successful development today. He paid special attention to the initiative by Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to launch high-speed freight trains along the Chelyabinsk-Bolashak-Iran railway line.

As Alexander Karavaev, a researcher at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told 1520 International in his interview, the North-South ITC is of great importance for Russia, especially if the country faces pressure at the Black Sea ports and Turkey tightens up its policy on Russian exports.

In addition, Alexander Karavaev is convinced that Russia’s foreign partners are eager to develop the North-South ITC. “Negotiations with Iran (concerning the development of the route - ed.) were held as early as 2020-2021; Azerbaijan had started renewing and upgrading its stretch of the Caspian railroad (along the Russian border in Dagestan to Astara - the border with Iran) prior to the coronavirus pandemic - all this work had begun well in advance, but the rollout pace is rather slow,” said a researcher of the RAS.

It should be pointed out that in mid-May, Russian Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev and Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mehrdad Bazrpash signed an agreement on cooperation for the construction of the Resht-Astara railroad in Iran. The length of the stretch will be 162 km. The road will establish a direct uninterrupted North-South ITC connection. The overall cost of the project will be 1.6 billion euros, with an intergovernmental loan of 1.3 billion euros allocated for its implementation.

Alexander Solyanik