A joint expert group of the Institute for Forecasting and Macroeconomic Research and Uzbekistan Railways assessed the significance of the “Central and South Asia: Regional Interconnectedness. Challenges and Opportunities” international conference, which will be held July 15-16, 2021 in Tashkent.
According to the institute, currently 93% of all cargo from China to Europe, and 96% from India to Europe is transported by sea. The mutual trade turnover of the two most economically advanced countries in Southeast Asia – India and Pakistan – with the EU countries shows stable growth, which leads to the growing demand for alternative modes of transport. Joining the SCO as full-fledged members in 2017 contributed to search of solution for developing international trade, experts say.
Thus, the search for other alternative land routes for transporting goods to Europe and back is an urgent task.
According to forecasts of experts, by 2025 the volume of traffic between India, Pakistan and European countries with even the smallest hypothetical redistribution (3%) of the cargo flow from the existing India-Pakistan-EU sea corridor to the Mazar-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar route will be 5.5 million tons. Uzbekistan’s revenues from the transportation of transit goods by railways are expected to be $595 million by 2025.
To increase the competitiveness of domestic corridors and to reorient transit goods from alternative to domestic railways, experts propose to form following corridors:
Uzbekistan - Afghanistan - Pakistan and China - Kyrgyzstan - Uzbekistan with the organization of road transport of goods on existing international roads from Kashgar (China) to Andijan (Uzbekistan) and Peshawar (Pakistan) to Galaba (Uzbekistan) with the charging the same tariff as for rail transport.
