Tajikistan is seeking ways to bypass Turkmenistan while carrying cargo to other countries. Tajik authorities are considering the possibility of taking semi-trucks across the Caspian Sea.
Tajik Minister of Economic Development and Trade, Nematullo Hikmatullozoda, has recently met in Baku with Taleh Ziyadov, Director General of the Baku International Sea Trade Port Complex, according to the press center of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MoEDT) of Tajikistan.
Ziyadov reportedly informed Hikmatullozoda of the port’s operations and proposed to use it for carrying Tajikistan’s cargo.
“The use of port will promote not only increase in freight traffic but also expansion of regional economic cooperation,” Ziyadov said.
The Baku International Sea Trade Port Complex was reportedly introduced into operation in 2018. The project of the new port complex was developed by the Dutch company Royal Haskoning and work and services on construction, supply and installation of goods at the dry part of the new port complex were carried out by Evrascon OJSC.
A land plot of 400 hectares was allocated for the construction of port complex. The Port of Baku reportedly has the opportunity to receive 12 vessels and its current cargo handling capacity is 15 million tons of cargo per year.
Baku Port is a transportation hub linking the west (Turkey and EU), east (Central and East Asia), south (Iran and India) and north (Russia).
The Baku International Sea Trade Port Complex, located at the crossroads of the East-West and North-South transport corridors, is an integral part of Azerbaijan’s policy of turning the region into an important transport and logistics center and plays a crucial role in expanding the country’s transit capacities.
Recall, Tajik long distance haulers carrying cargo to Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries have used alternate roads since February in order to bypass Turkmenistan.
Some of them are using the alternate road to Turkey via Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Georgia.
Some sources said that taking Tajik trucks across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan and from there to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan would cost additional 1,200 U.S dollars for each truck.
As it had been reported earlier, dozens of semi-trucks with cargo bound for Tajikistan were stranded on Turkmenistan’s borders with Iran and Uzbekistan for almost a month in September last year. The Ministry of Transport of Tajikistan that time advised drivers of Tajik trucks stranded on Iran-Turkmenistan border to use alternate roads to return home.
It is not clear why Turkmenistan should have barred Tajik vehicles from crossing its territory. The Turkmen authorities still keep silence.
Moreover, the Turkmen authorities do not allow freight trains bound for Tajikistan to pass through Turkmen territory.
One of the possibilities being considered is that Turkmenistan is adopting stricter security measures in response to a possible discovery of drugs being carried across the border. Tajikistan is believed by international drug enforcement officials to be a major hub for the trafficking of heroin originating in Afghanistan.
Another theory is that Tajikistan’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Sodiq Ashourboyzoda, on September 20 last year ruffled some feathers when he told Russian newspaper Kommersant that in connection with improvement of relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan Dushanbe has decided “to postpone the idea of construction of the railway from Turkmenistan to Tajikistan through Afghanistan until better times.”
Turkmenistan’s Foreign Ministry released a statement, in which it expressed its misunderstanding to the Tajik side in connection with the statement of Tajikistan’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan Sodiq Ashourboyzoda that Dushanbe intends to "defer to better times" the idea of building a railroad Turkmenistan- Afghanistan-Tajikistan.
The three nations involved signed a memorandum of intent on the project in 2013 and Turkmenistan put its section into commission in 2016, while Tajikistan has been postponing construction of its section “due to lack of finance.”
