Experts from South Caucasus on Prospect of Traffic through Meghri

Baku/25.02.21/Turan: The Sputnik news agency held a Baku-Yerevan-Moscow-Tbilisi teleconference to discuss the prospects for the development of transport flows through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

 The main topic of discussion on Wednesday was the issue of railway communication between Armenia and Russia through Azerbaijan, which was raised during the meeting of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev, as well as Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on January 11 this year in Moscow. Among the tasks set, the parties named the unblocking of economic, trade and transport links in the region, the opening of borders.

Georgia did not take part in these negotiations; this caused alarm in the expert community of this country about the possible losses of Georgia as a result of the opening of alternative routes through the South Caucasus. In particular, they discussed the prospect of infrastructure development while unblocking the railway communication between Armenia and Azerbaijan to neighboring states.

Iosif Archvadze, an expert from Georgia, who spoke during the discussion, expressed confidence that traffic through Georgia to Europe and Asia would not only not weaken, but even intensify.

"Over time, the traffic flow, the volume of cargo transportation will increase, and it will be necessary to develop road infrastructure. The intensity of the movement of goods flows will increase due to the growth of the economic potential of all three South Caucasian countries. This is one condition. Another is that the South Caucasus countries themselves are not only closest neighbors, but each of them performs a transit function, and these functions will increase over time - from East to West, from South to North and vice versa, the flows will grow.Interest from neighboring countries, and not only, will increase. In this regard, I do not look pessimistically at the prospects use of Georgian railways and other opportunities, "Archvadze said.

“Everyone, including Turkey, is interested in opening a railway through Nakhichevan and Armenia,” said Boris Martsinkevich, editor-in-chief of Geoenergetika.info magazine, speaking during the Baku-Yerevan-Moscow-Tbilisi teleconference.

Azerbaijan needs to restore the railway so that a direct connection with Nakhichevan appears. In his opinion, if the railway from Azerbaijan (through Karabakh, Meghri and Nakhichevan) continues to operate in Armenia (to Gyumri), then it will be possible to use the railway communication between Armenia and Turkey.

"It has the option of accessing the ports of the Caspian Sea through Georgia, but transport opportunities are never superfluous. If it becomes possible to send goods along the second railway line, then Turkey's interest in this is obvious. That is, everyone is interested, it remains to find a common language," added Martsinkevich.

“It is not by chance that the restoration and development of communications in the region became one of the main points of the statement of the heads of the three countries on November 10 last year,” said Elshad Mammadov, professor of the State University of Economics, Deputy Director of the Russian School of Economics.

According to him, it is the restoration of communications and economic ties between the countries that should become the incentive necessary for the region to turn into a region of stability and sustainable development.

"There are all the prerequisites for this. Our region also has significant potential for increasing investment activity. Issues of regionalization and the creation of new platforms for cooperation are extremely important. This also applies to the Caucasian republics and large countries of the region - Russia, Turkey and Iran," Mammadov said.

Let us recall that in Soviet times, the cargo turnover of the Transcaucasian republics of the USSR with Turkey went through the Armenian SSR (border station Akhuryan).

The total length of the South Caucasus railways is 5,004.9 km, of which 2,932 km are in Azerbaijan, 1,323.9 km in Georgia, and 749 km in Armenia. In Soviet times, the volume of passenger traffic reached 40 million people a year. —0—