Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan will benefit from North-South transport corridor - experts

MOSCOW, November 2. /TASS/. The North-South international transport corridor will be beneficial for Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan, experts interviewed by TASS said. They were commenting on the results of the summit of Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan that ended in Tehran on Wednesday. The route will also be complementary to the Chinese initiative of the Silk Road Economic Belt. "This project is extremely beneficial for all three [Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan] countries and to some extent this transport path is complementary to the Chinese Silk Road project," Vladimir Sazhin, senior researcher at the Center for Middle East Studies of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said. The expert noted that the transport corridor is "a very important logistical route from the warm seas of the Indian Ocean to the north of Europe." "They have been talking about this corridor for about fifteen years already. Some steps have been taken, a certain amount of work has been done to launch this corridor, but there are still many problems. I hope that at this summit these problems were solved politically, and now it is up to the people who deal with this issue," he said. Oleg Larin, an expert at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS), also believes that the North-South transport corridor will help the countries develop their economic potential. "Today, they ship cargos via this corridor, but the efficiency is low, which leads to high costs. If we implement this project, we will transport these cargoes at the lowest cost and the economies of all the countries will benefit from it," he said. Larin stressed that this transport corridor can be called "second Transsib" (Trans-Siberian mainline - TASS). "The geographic boundary between Asia and Europe passes across the Urals, and the geopolitical boundary between the two macro regions passes across the Azerbaijan-Russia-Iran line. This is a kind of a milestone that implies not only transport and trade flows, but also the movement of cultures and other humanitarian contacts," he said. North-South is a 7,200 km long transportation route from St. Petersburg to the port of Mumbai (India). It will connect Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and India. It is planned that this corridor will reduce not only time, but also the cost of cargo delivery. The corridor provides three main routes: the Trans-Caspian (through the sea ports of Astrakhan, Olya, Makhachkala), the Eastern and Western routes. The Belt and Road Initiative, put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping, is aimed at promoting cooperation among countries, primarily between China and the rest of Eurasia. The initiative unites two projects: the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21-st Century Maritime Silk Road. Read more