The Heads of Government of the EAEU countries supported the proposal of the Eurasian Economic Commission to include in the joint integration project “Eurasian Agroexpress” transportation carried out along the international transport corridor “North –South” in the direction of Turkmenistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United Arab Emirates and the Republic of India. The corresponding order of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council was adopted during a meeting held in Almaty.
“Due to the reorientation of a number of transport routes, the demand for the North-South corridor has increased significantly. Pilot shipments to Iran and India carried out within the framework of the project confirmed the attractiveness of the direction. Our countries here have great potential to expand their transit and export potential,” said the EEC Trade Minister Andrey Slepnev.
At the same time, he particularly noted the excess of the planned indicators of the Eurasian Aeroexpress for the first year of its operation. In total, 525.5 thousand tons were transported under the project in 2022, including 282.9 thousand tons of refrigerated cargo. The product range included chicken and beef meat, milk powder, fat-and-oil, fruit and vegetable and leguminous products.
“Despite the current restrictions on the supply of products from China in connection with the pandemic, multimodal transportation to this country was carried out very actively,” Andrei Slepnev stressed.
Nevertheless, according to him, within the framework of the project, a number of aspects were identified that hinder its effective work. In particular, the problem concerns obtaining permits for the import of frozen products to China via overland railway routes through the Dostyk-Alashankou and Altynkol-Khorgos border crossings. This could give a noticeable gain in the cost and time of cargo delivery in comparison with multimodal transportation through the ports of the Far East.
In this regard, the EEC was instructed to work with the authorized bodies of the interested member states of the Eurasian Economic Union on reaching agreements with the PRC on the elimination of restrictive measures and optimization of customs and other administrative procedures.
