Kazakhstan puts forward a number of initiatives in the transport sector for the countries of the Economic Cooperation Organization. Forbes.kz reports this with reference to the PM Alikhan Smailov.

The head of the Kazakh government voiced them during the ECO summit held the previous week in Tashkent. He emphasized the need to develop transportation and logistics in a region where most countries do not have access to the ocean.

In Astana, special attention is paid to the Trans-Caspian corridor. To increase its potential, Kazakhstan, together with Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, intends to implement roadmaps to eliminate bottlenecks and expand capacity.

It is planned to build the “Beineu – Shalkar” highway between the western regions of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. It will become part of the eighth TRACECA road corridor.

Kazakhstan also intends to use the capabilities of its Caspian ports. A container hub will be built in Aktau, and a multifunctional Sarja terminal will be built in Kuryk.

Another important area is increasing cargo traffic between China and Central Asia to 500 thousand containers per year. This should be facilitated by the construction of dedicated station tracks at Chinese-Kazakh checkpoints.

In addition, Astana will develop transportation along the North-South corridor. Together with Iran, Turkmenistan and Russia, a roadmap was adopted to increase its capacity to 15 million tons by 2027.