LINKING CONTINENTS

In the middle of next year Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey plan to commence the transportation of freight along the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) rail corridor. The rail route, along with the recently opened ferry terminal at the Yeni Baki port, will appreciably broaden the potential of the TRACECA transport system. The immediate objective of Baku, Ankara and Tbilisi is to attract the largest volume of freight to the new route. An international conference "The BTK rail line - new opportunities in the development of the historic Silk Road", which has been held in Baku, has contributed to the solving of this task.

Work on developing this strategically important trans-regional route, which began in February 2007 and will bring together the rail systems of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, is approaching its logical conclusion. Specifically, Azerbaijan has completed the main work on upgrading its rolling stock and redesigning its transport routes on a 317-km section of the Baku - Boyuk-Kasik main line. The main purpose of this capital-intensive project is to increase the throughput capacity of the rail line, and also to install a new signalling system, having fully automated the processes of rail traffic, and to eventually achieve an increase in speed in a westerly direction from 80 to 100-120 km an hour, reducing freight delivery times by almost a third. 

Construction on the Turkish section is also close to completion: 83 per cent of design work has already been completed here and a 79-km section is due to be commissioned before the end of this year. All facilities in Georgia will be ready by the beginning of next year. Work on upgrading a 183-km section of the Akhalkalaki-Marabda-Tbilisi railway has on the whole been completed here, track has been laid on a 30-km section up to the border with Turkey and construction of a 4.5km-long border tunnel is close to completion.

Those involved in the project believe that the first dry run along the new rail line will take place by the end of this year, and BTK will be able to be used commercially by the middle of next year. Provisionally, Azerbaijan and its partners in the TRACECA transport corridor - Turkey, Georgia and Kazakhstan - will from the second half of next year set in motion a new trans-regional route, the Iron Silk Way. The logistics of this route are based on the use of the potential of the BTK rail line and the ferry terminal at the Yeni Baki port, and also drawing on the potential of the upgraded port of Aktau and Turkey's main rail routes, in particular the Marmaray undersea tunnel built in Istanbul a year ago. 

This extensive transport infrastructure will help to substantially reduce temporary losses through effective logistics, increasing freight exchange between Europe and the countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia and at the same time attracting the broad Chinese market to this process. In the run-up to these events Azerbaijan and its partners in the building of the BTK corridor have been applying maximum efforts to publicize the new route and drawing potential transportation carriers from countries in the vast Eurasian region.

"The commissioning of an effective, economically viable and safe rail section Baku-Tbilisi-Kars means the start of a new stage in the development of the transport system in the region, mainly through a substantial increase in freight and passenger transportation and, in particular, thanks to the extension of the multimodal component of transit traffic," said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in his letter of greetings to the participants in the conference "The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars rail line: new opportunities in the development of the historic Silk Road". This representative forum was the first and a very effective international presentation of the commercial potential of the BTK corridor for the member-states of the Iron Silk Road trans-regional route, as well as the states of Europe and Central Asia.

"The states with a vested interest in the potential of BTK could sign up to the tripartite inter-governmental agreement signed between Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia in 2007," Ziya Mammadov, Azerbaijan's transport minister, said. "The new transport corridor has considerable potential for growth. For example, in the next two-three years the predicted volume of freight transportation will be 3m tonnes, and over the decade trans-shipment volumes will be in excess of 10m tonnes."

The estimates of international experts are just as optimistic: the peak throughput capacity of the BTK corridor could be as much as 17m tonnes of freight annually, and in the mid-term perspective this figure will be at the level of 1 million passengers and 6.5m tonnes of freight. And, by all accounts, the possibilities of this new transport project have not gone unnoticed by the international structures and states in the region. For example, according to TRACECA's Secretary General Eduard Biryukov, the BTK corridor and the upgraded ports of the Caspian states will be an integral part of the TRACECA corridor, providing an outlet to the European market for products from China and Central Asia.

However, in the first instance it is the post-Soviet states, in particular the countries of Central Asia that do not have an outlet to the world's oceans, that will, of course, take the main traffic of the Iron Silk Way. But, in the reverse direction, the corridor is very attractive for the trans-shipment of a considerable amount of industrial goods and consumer products from the Old World to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Central Asia and Afghanistan. In the mid-term perspective the new corridor could also be attractive for the export of freight (mainly containers) from China to Turkey and further to the markets of the Middle East and Southern Europe.

"Afghanistan is showing considerable interest in the new rail route, the use of which will enable all the states of Central Asia that do not have an outlet to maritime ports to increase the volumes and speed of transportation, at the same time ensuring their complete safety," Afghanistan's Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation Daud Ali Najafi stressed. Lithuania's Minister of Transport and Communications, Rimantas Sinkevi-cius, and his Belarus counterpart, Aleksey Avramenko, also spoke about the important role of the BTK rail corridor for the increase of transportation between Asia and Europe and, in the long term, transport flows from the Baltic joining this route.

At the end of the event a joint ministerial declaration was adopted covering questions of transport integration in both a bilateral and trilateral format. The participants in the forum also drew attention to the potential of the new rail route for the further development of the historic Silk Road. For example, within the context of the final document, the need was expressed for the joint development of the transport infrastructure and the creation of a favourable investment climate and a competitive transport services market, as well as encouraging the integration of electronic document distribution systems and intellectual transport systems which are taking shape in the states of the region.