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‘New rail transit era opening up for freight routes across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan’
cargoes from February 2019 to January 2021, he said.
“This is much higher than our expectations. Imagine the scale of operations and freight saving once it is fully operational,” the minister added.
Last year amid the coronavirus pandemic, India used Chabahar to send 75,000 tonnes of wheat as humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and 25 tonnes of pesticide malathion to Iran to deal with a locust invasion.
As part of the agreement with Iran, India is set to provide six cranes and other equipment worth $85mn to equip and operationalise the Shahid Beheshti terminal.
India also has plans to lay around 600 kilometres of railway line from Chabahar to Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan in Iran close to the Afghan border, at a cost of $1.6bn.
New Delhi has also proposed the inclusion of Chabahar port in the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), connecting Mumbai with Moscow via Iran and Azerbaijan.
INSTC envisions a 7,200-km-long multi-mode network of ship, rail and road routes for freight transport. Its objectives include cutting carriage costs by around 30% and transit time from 40 days to around 20 days.
A new rail transit era for freight travelling across railroads linking Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan is opening up, the Turkish Transport and Infrastructure Ministry has declared, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported on January 27.
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) on pursuing the opportunities offered by new links was lately signed by Turkish and Iranian rail officials in Ankara, it added.
The ministry said it expected around one million tonnes of cargo would this year be transported via rail between Turkey and Iran. Despite interruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic last year, three freight train services were run daily between Turkey and Iran and transported 564,000 tonnes of cargo, it noted.
The ministry said it anticipated that freight trains would soon also run between Turkey and Pakistan via Iran on a common tariff introduced by the three countries. Talks were ongoing to set this tariff, it added.
Finally, a recently completed railroad link between Iran and Afghanistan means it is now also possible to transport freight between Turkey and Afghanistan, via Iran.
The railroad administrations of Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan are to meet in coming months to set conditions for the use of that link for rail transit between the three countries.
9.1.5 Tourism sector news
Hotel closure rate in Iran has hit 30% amid pandemic says federation
Some 30% of hotels in Iran have shut down since the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the country in February, the Federation of Hotel Owners has said.
A collapse in bookings and lack of support provided to hotel owners to stay solvent saw many hotels either forced to close or mothball operations, it added.
“The industry has suffered Iranian rial 85tn ($304mn at the free market rate) in losses because of the pandemic and the radical decline in domestic and international travel,” federation representative Jamshid Hamzehzadeh was quoted as saying.
48 IRAN Country Report May 2021 www.intellinews.com