Turkmenistan unveils project to expand freight transportation that includes Azerbaijan

The Turkmen Railways agency is launching routes along major transit corridors to organise international freight transportation on schedule, Azernews reports.

The project plans to expand its geographical coverage from neighbouring countries to Turkiye, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan along the Iran-Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan and Georgia-Azerbaijan-Caspian Sea-Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan routes, as well as from Russia to the Persian Gulf countries and India.

The new service is expected to be able to take up to 90% of cargo volume from alternative delivery routes, such as road transportation, in the future.

It is worth noting that this initiative of Turkmenistan will boost the Middle Corridor, which connects the networks of container rail freight transportation between China and the European Union through the countries of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkiye, and Eastern Europe.

Multilateral multimodal transportation infrastructure links ferry terminals in the Caspian and Black Seas with the railway systems of China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkiye, Ukraine, and Poland.

The Middle Corridor facilitates increased cargo traffic from China to Turkiye, as well as to European countries and in the opposite direction.

A route train along this corridor delivers cargo from China to Europe in an average of 20-25 days, and this is one of the main advantages of this transport corridor.