Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) - Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia N. Turnava said that the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway was launched for the first time in a bilateral mode and called the events "historical" (before that, goods were sent only from China to Europe).

According to media reports, in January-October this year, about 1260 twenty-foot containers were transported via the BTK railway (371.9% more than in the same period in 2019 (267).

As experts of Trend.az emphasize, the time of transportation from Istanbul to Xi’an province is 12 days (the route is Turkey-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Kazakhstan-China). The launch of the BTK railway in a bilateral mode is aimed at intensifying: 1) export traffic from Europe to Asia; 2) economic cooperation between all participants in the transport corridor.

In turn, the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure of Turkey A. Karaismayil oglu noted that after the start of the pandemic, Ankara invested US$5.7 billion in the development of its transport infrastructure and intends to become a "logistics superpower" by: 1) increasing the capacity of the BTK from 5 to 20 million tons of cargo per year; 2) the modernization of a number of ports and the construction of new railways.

In this context, the intensification of Georgia’s activities within the BTK is also noted. In particular, infrastructural and commissioning works are currently underway on the Georgian section of the corridor, and testing of the installed signaling, centralization and blocking and communication systems is underway.

In general, it is emphasized that increasing the transport and transit capabilities of the BTK corridor will, on the one hand, increase container traffic in the China-Europe direction (for nine months of this year, container transportation along this route amounted to 388 thousand units - an increase of 61% compared to the same period in 2019), on the other hand, a significant intensification of economic cooperation between the participants in this transport corridor.