Kazakh PM in official visit to Azerbaijan

Kazakhstan's Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov arrived in Azerbaijan for an official visit, Kazinform has learnt from the Telegram channel of the Kazakh government.

The Kazakh Prime Minister was welcomed by Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Ali Ahmadov and Kazakh Ambassador to Azerbaijan Alim Baiel at the airport in Baku, Kazinform reports.

During the visit, the head of the Kazakh government is to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, as well as discuss a wide range of important issues of interstate cooperation with Azerbaijani Prime Minister Ali Asadov.

In particular, joint steps in the transport and logistics sphere, trade, energy, agriculture, IT, and industrial cooperation are to be discussed.

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are strategically located on the shores of the Caspian Sea and have rail networks that connect them to Europe and China, respectively. The two Caspian nations have the potential to develop and improve the transportation infrastructure to increase trade between them and facilitate the transit of goods to other regions.

The key focus of the cooperation in transportation and logistics is leveraging the Middle Corridor and integrating the Zangazur multi-modal route into it. Realization of the corridor’s full potential is expected to contribute to increasing the bilateral trade turnover.

The Trans-Caspian East-West Corridor, known shortly as the Middle Corridor, is crucial to reviving the ancient Silk Road. It traverses on rail and road routes across Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea and continues toward China on the Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan routes. The Baku International Sea Trade Port (Azerbaijan), Aktau/Kuryk ports (Kazakhstan) and Turkmenbashi Port (Turkmenistan) are the main maritime chunks of the multimodal transport corridor. The Middle Corridor promises even bigger benefits to the landlocked countries in the region.

The Middle Corridor is more economical and faster compared to the Northern Corridor as a trade route between Europe and Asia and shrinks the travel distance by 2,000 kilometres. The Middle Corridor also runs through more favourable climate conditions and shortens the travel time by 15 days compared to the sea route.

Furthermore, the Middle Corridor offers great opportunities for cargo traffic in Asia so that the loads can reach the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean region by integrating the port connections in Türkiye.