On September 23, 2020, the Meeting of the Permanent Representatives (National Secretaries) of the PS IGC TRACECA was held via web-conferencing

At the beginning of the Meeting, the meeting participants welcomed Mr. Rufat Bayramov, who officially assumed the position of the National Secretary of TRACECA in the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Mr. Asset Assavbayev, Secretary General of the PS IGC TRACECA, outlined the outcomes of the past events, the preparation status for the upcoming events, the TRACECA trainings and workshops. In particular, the activities of the existing Working Groups on rationalizing the transport routes scheme, finalizing the draft Agreement on a STP, developing the GTrD (Global Transit Document), as well as the step-by-step work plan for the development of container transport of the corridor were noted.

In the framework of the Agenda of the NS Meeting, the discussions focused on measures and conditions for border-crossing along the TRACECA corridor, the permit system and their impact on the development of international road traffic and other issues.

The TRACECA countries considered the Review on harmonization and simplification of border crossing procedures prepared by the PS to monitor the situation at border crossing points between states and expressed an approval to the necessity of eliminating the bottlenecks. In addition, the Secretary General emphasized the importance of taking into consideration the views of national carriers that are directly involved in the transport process and face difficulties at border crossings.

The draft document will be finalized with the relevant data with the assistance of the National Secretaries and national associations of international carriers and submitted for discussion at the next Meeting of the National Secretaries.

The meeting participants also expressed the preliminary positions on the analysis of the permit system and pointed out the importance of the efforts to converge the positions of the MLA states and to develop the common approaches on the Agreement on a Single Transit Permit (STP) of TRACECA.

Taking into account the final stage, one of the key points of exchange of views during the Meeting was the status of the effectiveness of the implementation of the “TRACECA Regional Action Strategy on Maritime Safety and Security and Environmental Protection for the period up to 2021”. The report on the TRAS implementation on the outcome of 2020 will be included in the Agenda of the IGC Meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria.

It should be reminded that currently, the Republic of Azerbaijan is the current Chairman Party in the IGC TRACECA.