Turkmenistan has an important role to play in the CASCA+ Route
The countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus play an important role in transport and transit corridors in the Eurasian region. In this context, a huge place is given to multimodal transport routes with the participation of these states, Natik Jafarov, CEO of ADY Container MMC, began his speech at the international conference on transport and transit corridors in Ashgabat.
One of such large-scale initiatives is the CASCA+ Multimodal Transport Route, which is a joint initiative of the state railways of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. It should be noted that the CASCA+ route is a continuation in a qualitatively new format of the international multimodal route "Countries of the Asia-Pacific region-China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan-Georgia-Europe", created in 2019 in Tashkent at a meeting of heads of state railways of these countries. Turkey joined the project in December 2021.
Currently, the CASCA+ route covers 3 regions – Central Asia - Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, the South Caucasus - Azerbaijan and Georgia, as well as Anatolia - Turkey. CASCA is the abbreviated name of these regions in English - Central Asia, South Caucasus and Anatolia. The "+" sign in the name of the route indicates readiness to accept new potential participants interested in transportation along the route, the ultimate goal of which is to connect the states of Southeast Asia, in particular China, with Europe.
The participating countries of the CASCA + Route position the project as a single interregional logistics product. To increase the volume of deliveries and cargo transportation, improve the quality of services provided in this area, as well as attract new potential customers, the project participants developed and approved the Casca+ brand and the casca.plus website.
In 2023, it is pladnned to introduce and integrate data for keeping records of cargo transportation along the route. The digital platform will allow operators to track cargo en route through the territories of the participating countries, carry out an operational exchange of transport documents, plan the timely delivery of wagons and containers and monitor the time spent by transport on the territory of the participating countries of the route.
One of the main objectives of the Route is to ensure transport connectivity between the countries of Central Asia and Europe. A landmark event in this context was the container block train from Uzbekistan to Bulgaria, consisting of 46 wagons and 91 units of 20-foot containers. It was sent by the countries of the Route in December 2022 and followed the route "Uzbekistan - Turkmenistan - Azerbaijan - Georgia - Bulgaria/ Europe" with a length of more than 4,000 km. It is necessary to strive for such container trains to run on this route on a regular basis, Natik Jafarov said.
The multimodality of the route passing through two seas and the territories of numerous countries makes it possible to effectively use the possibilities of this corridor. Since the launch of the route, about 30 thousand containers in 20-foot equivalent have been transported. And Turkmenistan has a special role to play in this project - the country's share in transportation during this period amounted to 9,000 containers in the direction of import, 12,000 containers in the direction of export and 9,000 containers in the transit direction. The goal of the route operators is to increase the volume of container traffic to 30 thousand containers this year.
The best result on the route was achieved in May 2021 - containers were delivered from the Turkish city of Izmir to Osh (Kyrgyzstan) in 18 days, which is the optimal indicator of transit time. The goal of the operators is to ensure the delivery of containers on the route from the Chinese city of Kashgar to Istanbul in 18 days.
The CASCA+ route is relatively "young", but with a great prospect of becoming a full-fledged transcontinental logistics product for cargo transportation between the countries of Southeast and Central Asia, as well as European countries, the participation of new potential customers in the project will significantly accelerate this process, the CEO of ADY Container MMC concluded his speech.
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