Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan on their way to join North-South corridor operations

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, October 25. Work on the accession of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the intergovernmental agreement on the operations of a North-South Transport Corridor is already underway, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation Valentin Ivanov said, Trend reports.

The remark was made during the meeting of the Council for the Development of the transport complex under the Federation Council.

“Currently, 12 countries, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Oman, Syria, Tajikistan, and Türkiye are already part of the agreement. Additionally, work is underway on the accession of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to this agreement,” he said.

Ivanov noted that Russia is systematically working on the development of the North-South corridor, including promotion among government agencies and shippers of the countries of the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, as well as Central, South and Southeast Asia and the African continent.

“Interdepartmental memorandums of understanding in the field of transport and transit have already been signed with the Iranian side, as well as the Turkmen and Kazakh sides. The signing of similar documents is currently being discussed with India, Oman, Qatar, Kenya, and Bahrain, as well as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia,” Ivanov added.

Meanwhile, the intergovernmental agreement on the establishment of the North-South Transport Corridor was signed between Russia, India and Iran in on September 12 of 2000. Today, the North-South transport corridor is a 7,200 kilometers long multimodal route passing from Russia’s Saint Petersburg to the Indian port of Mumbai.

In total, 13 countries have ratified the agreement (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Armenia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Sultanate of Oman, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Türkiye and Ukraine).