Tehran, July 4 (MRUD NEWS)—Speaking to the Press TV reporter amid the third trilateral meeting between Iran, Russia, and India in order to promote freight transit along the International North-South Transport Corridor(INSTC) through the cost and time efficient route of Iran's territory, Iran Minister of Roads and Urban Development, Mehrdad Bazrpash, explained about his proposal for theINSTC called “Iran-Rah” Initiative with more exact details.
This is quite an important initiative proposed by Iran Minister of Roads and Urban Development, Mehrdad Bazrpash, said Gisso Misha Ahmadi, Press TV reporter, and further explaining that “Iran’s Initiative is a transit route that is a third of the original transit route from Russia to India through the Black sea. So basically, this will cut down the time for the route to about 50 percent.
And this is very important when you are shipping cargo. Of course there are a lot of investments needed in this particular initiative. The trilateral meeting today between India, Russia, and Iran was quite a fruitful meeting according to the Minister. Also there were other proposals to join in this initiative on the part of other member countries”.
In this interview Mehrdad Bazrapsh said:
“‘Iran-Rah’ is a concept in the INSTC and shows that Iran is a path as well as a solution for safe and secure passage route for all the neighbouring countries in the region.
Iran is a solution as it provided logistic solutions when there was rivalry between countries to increase national output and to deliver them to other destinations and it was a priority for the countries.
These days corridors have turned into a political capacity to use the tools and sometimes they bully other countries. This concept has grown in Iran in the past few years and has been developed and followed for cooperation between countries.
Today a trilateral meeting between Iran, India and Russia is held as the founders of the INSTC. Other countries that have also joined this corridor have expressed their readiness to have bilateral meetings with Iran or/and Russia.
Meetings with thirteen countries will be held in the future and we are continuing with our daily affairs and these agreements for increasing the infrastructures along the INSTC. For the rail routes of the INSTC, there are three routes.
One is in the north for which the agreement for construction of Rasht-Astara Railway is signed in the presence of the Iran and Russia presidents. We have the INSTC in the east of Iran that ends in Chabahar.
Part of this route is being completed and contractors are working to complete it. The INSTC in the west of Iran is also strategic and there is a parallel road corridor with very good infrastructure.
Because even with turkey we have four border stations. The east of Iran has borders with Turkmenistan and we are improving them as our priorities. So we are doing them concurrently. So we are following multi-modal transport. We also have sea to sea links from the north sea to the south sea.
The Port of Amriabadin the north and other ports are being developed. Also the Rasht to Caspian Railroad will be also connected. So the freight can be shipped from the Caspian Sea to the five littoral states.
“Iran-Rah” has been defined as opposing unilateralism and so we are following a mixed, multimodal transport link. Our approach is to participate with other countries and we believe that the success is achieved through other countries’ cooperation.
We encourage other countries to join in which will benefit themselves. In that past we had the Silk Road as a historical matter. One of the participants in the trilateral meeting said that it is a smart initiative if Iran is trying to re-launch the Silk Road. So Countries need to increase their economic resilience against unfair sanctions and the solution is the INSTC.
In the future we will discuss separately the east-west corridor and we need to have separate meetings for that. With regards to investments in this initiative,we need all the thirteen members and we suggest investment to them and we are creating a joint fund and concersium which its related meeting as an expert committee is being held right now in this regard. They can visit and examine the entire route to see if more infrastructure is needed. We have more than 50 train stations and more that 1800 km railway to Bandar Abbas which all require fresh investment funds and we encourage all countries to join in. In Iran some banks are taking part and cooperating and so investment is necessary for this”.