Multilateral MoU to Expand INSTC

Railroad entities of Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia and Belarus signed an agreement to expand the International North-South Transport Corridor. The corridor is a 7,200-km multimodal network of ship, rail and road routes for moving freight through India, Russia, Iran, Europe and Central Asia. The memorandum of understanding was signed by the heads of Iranian, Azeri, Russian and Belarus rail companies, Saeed Mohammadzadeh, Javid Gurbanov, Vladimir Morozov, and Oleg Belozerov, respectively, on the sidelines of the 67th meeting of Council for Rail Transport of the Commonwealth and Baltic states, Fars News Agency reported on Saturday. During the meeting, the senior rail officials also discussed construction of Rasht-Astara Railroad. It was announced in the meeting that the volume of transportation through INSTC has increased by 21.6% in the nine months of the year to reach 4.7 billion tons.