International North-South Transport Corridor founders meet in Teheran

The 7,200-km-long INSTC is a multi-modal network of ship, rail and road routes for moving freight between India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia and Europe.

India’s deputy national security advisor Vikram Misri, Iran’s transport and urban development minister Mehrdad Bazrpash, head of Iran's Ports and Maritime Organisation Ali-Akbar Safaei and senior aide to president of the Russian Federation Igor Yevgenyevich Levitin attended the meeting, dubbed ‘Iran Rah’.

India wants to promote extended usage of Iran’s Chabahar Port, its first foreign port project. Misri emphasised India’s determination to cooperate with Iran and Russia to complete the project.

Bazrpash underlined some of the Islamic Republic’s major principles regarding the promotion of INSTC including multilateralism, partnership, transit neighborhood, networking, facilitation of trade, and intelligent and technological development of transit, and called for maximum collaboration for the development of exchanges through the INSTC.

“Iran's joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union will provide unique opportunities to the country’s trade partners, and the Islamic Republic is determined to remove all its tariff and non-tariff barriers in the shortest possible time,” Safaei was quoted as saying by Iranian media reports.

The primary rationale for such meetings is to promote freight transit between India, Russia and other Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea nations, he said.

Terming the network ‘a humanitarian corridor’, Lavitin said the definition of a single policy for trade through this corridor is the most important requirement for developing trade in this initiative.

“The main issue discussed in this meeting is defining the same framework and reaching a common understanding for all the business operators that are willing to use this route,” he added.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)