Uzbekistan’s Transport Ministry has said that there were talks on advancing the Belarus-Russia-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan multimodal transport corridor during a recent meeting of transport ministers from the respective countries.
The focus was on establishing a robust multimodal transport corridor to connect Central Asian and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) nations with South Asian countries via Uzbekistan. This initiative seeks to enhance Pakistan’s transit potential.
A roadmap, endorsed in Termez, outlines strategies for enhancing freight transportation. These include evaluating transit cargo, digitizing documentation, and optimizing processes.
Since the signing of the Uzbekistan-Pakistan transit trade agreement in 2021, cargo transportation through Afghanistan has surged significantly, reaching 675,000 tons in 2022 and nearly one million tons in 2023. Uzbekistan aims to surpass these freight performance benchmarks in 2024.
In November 2023, during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) transport forum in Tashkent, a memorandum involving Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan was signed, outlining plans for establishing this corridor, which holds promising prospects for Pakistan’s connectivity and trade networks.
