NEW "WINDOW" ON THE SEA

When the first stage of the international maritime commercial port "Yeni Baki" is put into operation soon, it will allow Azerbaijan to markedly expand its possibilities as the Europe-Caucasus-Asia corridor. In the next month or two the infrastructure of the port of Alat will start operating for ferries plying the waters of the Caspian Sea. Cargo traffic will grow even further as the new regional project to handle multimodal container transport is implemented. It is estimated that in the second half of next year Azerbaijan and its partners in the Silk Road Transport Corridor (TRACECA [Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia]), namely Turkey, Georgia and Kazakhstan are planning the start-up of a new trans-regional route, the Iron Silk Road. This route is being constructed to take advantage of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway line and the "Yeni Baki" international sea port. When these projects are implemented, it will markedly cut down the time needed for increasingly effective freight traffic between Europe and the states of the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia, while simultaneously attracting the enormous capacity of the Chinese market into this process. 

It is noteworthy that the participants in the project have focussed on expanding the railway-ferry transportation of multimodal containers in the non-raw materials segment of regional trade. The details of the tariff policy, concessions and preferences with regard to attracting freight onto the Iron Silk Road will be clarified during "The prospects for developing the Silk Road" international conference to be held in Baku in October this year. Representatives of something like 40 states ranging from Japan to Great Britain are expected to attend it. 

But, even according to preliminary estimates, the new route will offer a comparatively short and safe alternative to the other commercial routes between the East and the West, namely sea transportation and the Trans-Siberian railway. It will have a capacity of 15m tonnes of freight per year. To begin with, the main freight transported along the Iron Silk Road will undoubtedly be the goods of the former Soviet states, in particular providing the countries of Central Asia with access to the world ocean. Thus, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are examining the possibility of transporting cotton and other agricultural produce to international markets via the Navoi-Turkmenbashi-Baku-Tbilisi-Kars corridor. In its turn, Kazakhstan is proposing to use the corridor for the export of wheat, ore concentrates, coal and other dry freight. And the opportunity for delivering considerable volumes of manufactured and consumer goods from the Old World to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Central Asia and Afghanistan in return looks extremely attractive. The Iron Silk Road also looks fairly attractive for freight (mainly container) transport from China, but in the future from other states in South-East Asia supplying Turkey and the markets of the Middle East and Southern Europe. According to preliminary estimates, the growth in the trade turnover between China and Turkey alone may increase from today's 24bn dollars to 100bn dollars by 2023.

For the moment, the participants in this regional transport project are striving to complete the construction and upgrading of the infrastructure involved, in particular the port component. At issue is the large-scale work on the ports of Aktau, Turkmenbashi and Olya, the modernisation of the ferry terminals and container complexes. Thus, Kazakhstan will soon complete the expansion of the port of Aktau: three dry-cargo terminals and one "dry port" on the territory of the SEZ "Khorgos-East Gate" project will be completed in 2015. The laying of the Beyneu-Zhezkazgan line in Mangystau region will also be completed before the end of this year. This "steel route" makes direct communication possible with Central and Western Kazakhstan, shortening the freight traffic access route to the port of Aktau by 600 km.

Work on a similar scale to expand the port infrastructure is going ahead on the western shores of the Caspian Sea. A few years ago, a decision was taken in Azerbaijan to transfer the existing port beyond the bounds of the capital where there was far too much traffic and build the country's new "sea gates" from scratch. Work on this started in November 2010:  the foundations of the new international commercial sea port of "Yeni Baki" were laid in the populated location of Alat, 65 km to the south of the capital. This capital-intensive project is to cost roughly 870m manats and is being financed primarily out of state coffers; in the subsequent period it is moreover planned to attract private investors into the venture. Over the last few years large-scale dredging has been carried out to deepen the harbour, rail and road routes have been laid and a number of structures have also been erected on land, in which port-related equipment has been installed.

According to the latest information, work has almost been completed on the first-stage facilities, namely the construction of two quays equipped to handle container and "ro-ro" type vessels, and three cargo berths to handle universal dry-cargo vessels are under construction. In this part of the port complex the adjacent territory is already being equipped with the necessary facilities and utilities.

To begin with the new ferry complex in Alat will be capable of handling 50,000 containers a year, but in the future, with the increasing flow of trans-Caspian goods, the through-put capacity of the terminal will markedly expand, so it can handle roughly one million containers of goods annually. It is expected that the first ferry-transport operations at the new port may already begin in July-August this year.

Cargo traffic growth at the new port will peak in the coming years, and this process will be timed to coincide with the commissioning of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway corridor. In the initial stage it is planned to carry up to one million passengers and 6.5m tonnes of freight on this line, with future freight transportation growth expected to rise to 17m tonnes per year.

It is noteworthy that besides the growth in freight traffic, within the framework of the TRACECA, the port of "Yeni Baki" may be provided with extra traffic due to the formation of a container -ferry port at Olya near Astrakhan, in which the Russian side has been expressing interest of late.

Azerbaijan is a kind of geographical centre in the logical chain of the extended Iron Silk Road, and attention was focussed on this circumstance when drawing up the project for the port in Alat. Originally, the port's capacity was calculated not only to meet the country's domestic needs, but also a marked growth in transit freight traffic. So, in the first stage alone, which is scheduled to be completed in the very near future, the freight capacity of the port of "Yeni Baki" will be something like 11.6m tonnes.

The second stage in the project envisages the construction of another three cargo berths, and in the third stage two additional cargo berths will be erected. After all the scheduled facilities have started operating, there will be 14 ferry, cargo and container terminals at the port of Alat. In the future, when the port of "Yeni Baki" gets to full capacity, it will be possible to handle roughly 20m tonnes of cargo and one million containers here annually. In the not too distant future, the construction of a major regional logistical centre will start on the territory of the port, calculated to serve 100,000 standard containers and called upon to promote the development of multimodal transfers between the ports of the Caspian.

As well as developing the port and logistical infrastructure, Azerbaijan is applying identical efforts in purchasing specialized vessels. Orders for the first seven ferries were placed at the Uljanik shipyards in the Croatian town of Pula back in the mid-1980s. After a lengthy interval, the Caspian Steamship Line fleet was boosted with another four new ferries from the Croatian shipyard, and today the total number of this type of vessels is eleven.