Armenia strives to become transit country for combined transportation

Armenia is working to become a transit country for multimodal transportation of goods from Europe to Iran and vice versa, Deputy Minister of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies, Artur Arakelyan said Friday.

In an interview with Armenpress, Arakelyan said,"As an experiment, this week two sea containers left Germany for a port in Romania, from where they were directed to Poti, Georgia. The containers were loaded onto a cargo train from Poti and were transported to the train station of Yeraskh, after which they were sent to Iran on trucks".

According to the Deputy Minister, this transit multimodal transportation of cargo had been under discussion for two years, but the practical stage of negotiations commenced this year following the meeting of the leadership of South Caucasus Railway CJSC and Transport Companies Association of Iran during Armenia EXPO 2016 in Tehran.

"In addition to the boost in economic activity, this establishment of this corridor is also of strategic value to us," Arakelyan was quoted as saying.

He added that the transportation of the first two containers through this route allowed Armenian authorities to address all issues and shortcomings identified in the process.

Landlocked Armenia has with eastern neighbor Azerbaijan practically sealed since independence due to an armed conflict between the sides over Nagorno Karabakh that ended in a ceasefire in 1994.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in solidarity with Azerbaijan in 1993, leaving Armenia only the border with Georgia and the tiny southern border with Iran for movement by land. Endite