TASHKENT: Uzbekistan’s Transport Ministry has said that there were talks on advancing the Belarus-Russia-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan multimodal transport corridor during a recent meeting of transport ministers from the respective countries.
According to the ministry, participants deliberated on establishing a multimodal transport corridor to link Central Asian and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries with South Asian nations through Uzbekistan. The primary objective is to bolster Uzbekistan’s transit capabilities.
A roadmap, signed in Termez, delineates plans for augmenting freight transportation, which includes analyzing transit cargo, digitizing documents, and streamlining processes.
Following the Uzbekistan-Pakistan transit trade agreement in 2021, cargo transport via Afghanistan has witnessed a significant increase, reaching 675,000 tons in 2022 and nearly one million tons in 2023. Uzbekistan aims to surpass these freight performance figures in 2024.
In November 2023, a memorandum was signed in Tashkent during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) transport forum, involving Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, outlining the establishment of the corridor.
