New seaports of Georgia and Turkmenistan to optimize Eurasian cargo flows
Head of International Port of Turkmenbashy M.Keldjayev and management of Anaklia Development Consortium and authorities of the International Port of Turkmenbashi signed recently a memorandum on cooperation, Orient has learned from Turkmenbashy Port authorities. The consortium of companies “Conti International” (USA) and TBC Holding (Georgia) will launch the construction of the deepsea port with an initial capacity of 7 million tons in Georgian Black Sea town of Anaklia at the end of November this year. The planned commissioning date is 2020. MoU has fixed the determination of the parties to establish regional and international cooperation in the field of container freight and to create the port infrastructure necessitated by geographical location of the two marine hubs. The sides have agreed on know-how exchange in the field of maritime trade and the expansion of business partnership in the scale of international trade relations. According to the heads of the consortium, the attraction of cargo flows from Turkmenistan, as well as from Central Asia via Turkmenbashi seaport is of special importance for Anaklia port, which will be geographically located on the shortest route between Europe and Asia. Taking into account the current transport routing - ferry services Baku-Turkmenbashi, Baku-Tbilisi railway and Tbilisi-Anaklia highway, the delivery of cargo from Turkmenistan to the planned Georgian harbor with further access to the European Black Sea ports of Bulgaria and Romania will take 4-5 days. The signing of MoU between the Turkmenbashi seaport and Anaklia Development Consortium follows the summit talks, held during the visit of president Berdymuhamedov to Georgia in July 2015. Then, Turkmen leader noted that the use of the Caspian-Black Sea transport and transit corridor would provide an opportunity to enhance the integration with Europe and the Middle East. And president Margvelashvili told at press conference that Georgia supports the ideas of the Turkmen leader on the joint creation of transport corridors of global importance. Thus, emerging diversity of multimodal transport system would contribute to the diversification of exports of Turkmen petroleum products, LNG and petrochemicals, in the view of industrial capacity building of the Caspian Balkan province of Turkmenistan.
