Page 48 - IRANRptFeb22

Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan sign MoU on expanding railroad
Pakistan Railways said the train consisted of eight wagons carrying pink salt weighing 150 tonnes.
A second freight train carrying 525 tonnes of soapstone had reportedly set out on its journey to Turkey.
Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan have signed a trilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) to expand railroad cooperation to boost cargo volumes between the three Caspian Sea littoral states.
The document reportedly sets out an aim to increase freight traffic from Kazakhstan to Turkmenistan and onwards to Iran. According to the memorandum, a joint working group should be formed by the three nations. The three countries are linked via the 917.5-kilometre Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway launched in 2014. The railway is part of the North-South international transport corridor. The rail route connects Ozen in energy-rich western Kazakhstan with Bereket-Etrek in Turkmenistan and ends in Gorgan in northeastern Iran.
The volume of cargo transit between Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan has grown since the launch of the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway, reaching 272,960 tonnes as of the first quarter of 2020.
9.1.5 Tourism sector news
Iran set to resume issuing tourist visas in late October
Caspian countries ‘developing concept for sea tourism’
Iran will later this month resume issuing tourist visas, Iran’s Minister for Tourism and Cultural Heritage Ezatollah Zarghami has announced, according to Mehr News.
Tourism to Iran has all but come to a halt given the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that started early last year, with tourism visas issued to foreigners outside the country mostly postponed and the visa-on-arrival scheme frozen at all airports. But with a redoubled drive to vaccinate Iranians against coronavirus, the prospect of allowing foreign tourists to visit became feasible, officials have said.
“By an order of President [Ebrahim Raisi] the issuance of tourist visas and the flow of foreign tourists from land and air borders will be resumed from [the Persian calendar month of] Aban [October 23 – November 21], following 19 months of suspension,” Zarghami was quoted as saying.
Prior to the pandemic, 240,000 people were directly employed and 550,000 were indirectly employed in the Iranian tourism industry, industry estimates suggest.
The five countries with a Caspian Sea coastline intend to develop tourism segments including ecological, beach, pilgrimage and cross-border, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said during last week’s 6th Caspian Media Forum in Astrakhan, Russia. Under the 5th Caspian Summit communique, bodies of the Caspian Sea states—Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan—were instructed to hold five-sided consultations on tourism in the Caspian Sea region. These consultations went ahead on August 27, 2019 in Aktau, Kazakhstan.
The most important task now, Zakharova said, was the creation of an architecture of cooperation between the Caspian Sea countries in the field of tourism, with a clear definition of its legal framework, the development of convenient visa mechanisms and the coordination of cruise tourism routes. “Currently, a draft agreement with the Caspian countries in the field of tourism is being worked out, with the involvement of commercial structures of the
48 IRAN Country Report February 2022 www.intellinews.com