On 11 December 2018, the representatives of the Ministry of Shipping of the Government of India and Centre for Strategic Studies under the Presidency of the Republic of Azerbaija visited the TRACECA Headquarters

Mr. Singh and his colleague Mr. Chaudhuri informed that presently they are in Baku as Visiting Research Fellows and jointly with the Centre for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan (Strateji Araşdırmalar Mərkəzi - SAM)  they are undertaking a research  on the topic – “Potentials of Azerbaijan in transportation and logistics”.

Since TRACECA has a very important role in translating the Government policies into action, Mr. Singh mentioned that it would be of interest to understand prospects and views of TRACECA on the potentials that Azerbaijan as a TRACECA member country offers, the areas that are of key concern and ensure the development of trade-economic relations of the regional countries.

Mr. Ciopraga and Mr. Singh along with experts of the TRACECA Permanent Secretariat shared their views and observations in the areas of logistics, infrastructure, rules and procedures and business facilitation and the areas where improvement is required.

In particular, TRACECA member states are focused on removal of the bottlenecks in the way of development and sustainability of TRACECA corridor by developing road, rail, air and marine infrastructure, border management, harmonizing legislation between countries etc.

Mr. Ciopraga stated that TRACECA concentrates on the development of multimodal transport and creation of unified and single transport document for goods transportation, as private companies are interested in multimodal transportation.

TRACECA has at present thirteen member countries. Lithuania and Greece are observers of TRACECA, who are invited to the meetings /conferences of TRACECA and provide assistance on various aspects of TRACECA. The funding of TRACECA projects had previously been done by the European Commission for the purpose of improvement of traffic between Europe and Asia along the ITC TRACECA.

By now the PS IGC TRACECA has signed 10 MoUs. Having in mind, that 7 TRACECA member countries are also a part of the CAREC initiative, TRACECA has signed MoU with the CAREC Institute to develope infrastructure, and to solve transport related problems of the member countries. TRACECA also signed a MoU with the “Silk Road Chamber of Commerce” to collaborate with the China’s One Belt One Road Initiative (BRI).

Mr. Singh had also interest with regards to fleet development in TRACECA member states, particularly the service substandard ships. TRACECA Experts informed that the fleet of the TRACECA member states takes out of service substandard ships which do not meet the requirements of the IMO International Conventions.

The guests were informed that there was launched building of two universal ships, RO-PAX type as well as oil tankers for the Caspian Shipping Company at the Baku ship-building yard.

During the discussion, it was also mentioned that the border crossing procedures, the technical obstacles such as different gauge in railway systems and different legislation approach in the member-countries prove to be a challenge in transporting cargo not only by rail (specifically) but also in  other modes of transport.