First haulage via North-South Transport Corridor successful, says Russian official

TEHRAN, November 1. /TASS/. The first cargo-carrying operation via the North-South Transport Corridor in transit through Iran was a success, Russia’s Deputy Transport Minister Alexei Tsydenov told Tass on Tuesday. The deputy minister led the Russian delegation to a session of the Russian-Iranian working group for transport cooperation, which ended in Tehran on Tuesday. Tsydenov said test container haulage from India to Russia through Iran had proceeded in line with planned parameters. "We hope for the future development of this direction," he added. "Our companies have studied all components of this route - its car, railway and sea sections," Tsydenov went on. "Work was done to find consignors in India and Russia interested exactly in this route of transportation," he said. "Now we know the time of dispatch - it takes the cargo seven days to travel across Iran. This is not very quickly, but these are just first dispatches," he said, marking that work was in progress to reduce the delivery time. The deputy minister also said a unified transportation document was needed, as a need to redraft them was a weak point of the project. He said work was in progress with China and Europe on a single rail waybill. The idea to create a South-North international transport corridor was put forward in 1993. In 2000, an agreement was signed between Russia, India and Iran, the countries through which the transit route goes. The time of cargo delivery, in particular from India to Russia, is to reduce by half and will not exceed 30 days. Besides, the cost of cargo delivery is also expected be 30 percent cheaper. Read more