The regular meeting of the Coordinating Committee for the development of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TMTM) was held earlier this month in Astana.
The meeting was attended by the heads of the railway administrations of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Aktau, Baku International Sea Trade Port, the Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company, Batumi Sea Port, the company Ukrferry Translogistic SRL, as well as representatives of the International Trans-Caspian transport consortium.
The main topic of the meeting was the creation of the “International Association of Trans-Caspian international transport route”.
The meeting addressed the leaders of JSC NC Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ) K. Alpysbaev, JSC Georgian Railways Mr Bakhtadze, CJSC BR J. Gurbanov, CJSC AKMP R. Veliev, CJSC BISTP T. Ziyadov.
The railway administrations of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Georgia signed a Memorandum of Association and adopted its Charter. The Association office will be located in Astana.
It was noted that “the activities of the Association will focus on attracting transit and foreign trade cargo, development of integrated logistics products from TMTM”.
It is planned that the association will address the issues of “an effective tariff policy, optimisation of costs and value of integrated services, the creation of a single technology transportation process, contributing to the reduction of administrative barriers related to border and customs procedures and processing of cargo and containers in the ports of the play stations.”
All these measures are aimed at ensuring the competitiveness of TMTM compared to alternative routes.
“During the existence of the Coordinating Committee considerable work was conducted on building an effective tariff policy, the introduction of a single technology transportation of goods and the creation of joint integrated logistics product Nomad Express, container trains are running, was set up the Trans-Caspian international transport consortium”, said K. Alpysbaev.
The Kazakh party informed about the implementation of the project “Construction of the ferry complex in Kuryk port and operation of universal utility ferries” commissioning of the first start-up complex at the port of Kuryk by the end of 2016.
In addition, they discussed the establishment of competitive rates on TMTM. The parties agreed on preferential tariff conditions for a number of Kazakhstani goods export, including grain, oil and non-ferrous metals, through the territories of the countries - TMTM participants.
(Source: KTZ)
