More than $73 million worth of investments were attracted in Bandar Anzali Trade-Industrial Free Zone Organization's projects during the first eight months of the current Iranian year (March 21-Nov. 21), the Public Relations of Anzali FTZ said.
Close to 6.7 trillion rials ($60 million) worth of local investments were attracted to projects in the FTZ located in northern Iran to register a 98% hike compared with the similar period of last year, ILNA reported.
These investments were mainly made for establishing industrial and production units, hotels, service centers, recreational and tourist centers and residential areas.
Some $10 million worth of foreign investments were attracted in Anzali over the same eight-month period, indicating a 178% upsurge year-on-year.
Along International North-South Transport Corridor
The FTZ is situated in an eponymous port city in Gilan Province along the International North-South Transport Corridor.
A new railroad connecting the two Iranian provinces of Qazvin and Gilan was tested in November.
The new route, locally known as 'Qazvin-Rasht' (the capitals of Qazvin and Gilan provinces respectively), will extend from Anzali to the border city of Astara. The Rasht-Astara stretch is a missing link in the transit corridor.
“Qazvin-Rasht Railroad is important in that it helps complete the International North-South Transit Corridor. Some 18.5 trillion rials [$180 million] have gone into this 164-kilometer-long project so far," Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, the head of Planning and Budget Organization, said.
The official added that the project will be officially inaugurated by the president before the year is out (March 20, 2019).
"We are pursuing a bigger goal, which is the completion of the currently under construction 41-kilometer Rasht-Anzali Railroad project … We need to connect the railroad to where cargo can be directly unloaded from ships onto train wagons," he said.
INSTC is a major transit route designed to facilitate the transportation of goods from Mumbai in India to Helsinki in Finland, using Iranian ports and railroads, which the Islamic Republic plans to connect to those of Azerbaijan and Russia.
The corridor will connect Iran with Russia’s Baltic ports and give Russia rail connectivity to both the Persian Gulf and the Indian rail network.
This means goods could be carried from Mumbai to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and further to Baku. They could then pass across the Russian border into Astrakhan before proceeding to Moscow and St. Petersburg, before entering Europe.
INSTC would substantially cut the travel time for everything from Asian consumer goods to Central Eurasia’s natural resources to advanced European exports.
The multimodal route is estimated to reduce the time and cost of transportation of goods between India and Europe from 40 to 15 days. The corridor has the potential of diverting up to 10 million tons of India-Europe trade to the route.
Azerbaijan agreed to provide Iran with €500 million worth of loan for completing the INSTC section leading from Iran to its border last year.
When the Rasht-Astara Railroad is completed, the cost of cargo transportation through he INSTC between Asia and Europe is expected to decrease by 30%.
Makam Pedram, executive manager of the Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructures Company, said the Qazvin-Rasht rail route has the capacity to transport 3.38 million passengers and 10 million tons of cargos per year.
“Passenger trains and cargo trains can speed up to 160 kilometers per hour and 120 km/ph respectively on this railroad, which has 53 tunnels and 62 bridges, collectively stretching over 22 kilometers and 9 kilometers respectively,” he said.
More than 14 million cubic meters of embankments and 18 million cubic meters of excavation were carried out for this project, more than 40% of which were located in mountainous regions.
The construction of Qazvin-Rasht Railroad started in the fiscal 2005-6.
