The First Meeting of the High-Level Working Group on the “Tajikistan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran-Türkiye” (TUTIT) Multimodal Corridor, co-organized by the Republic of Tajikistan and the ECO Secretariat, was held on September 21, 2023 in Dushanbe.
H.E Mr. Aziz Ibrohim, the honorable Minister of Transport of the Republic of Tajikistan while inaugurating the meeting, underlined that the purpose of the meeting is to discuss the development and promotion of the subject international transit corridor in order to increase cargo transportation and simplify trade procedures, especially for the land-locked countries of the region. The Minister also underlined the importance of the newly established corridor in opening a new route from China to the en-route countries and Europe and called for further investment for development of the infrastructure along the Corridor.
Mr. Akbar Khodaei, ECO Director for Transport and Communications outlined the objectives of the initiative as facilitation of cargo transportation by road and rail modes of transport, ensuring the efficiency of international freight traffic, and development of trade relations to strengthen economic ties in the ECO region. He stressed on the necessity to enhance infrastructure development, establish common tariffs, harmonize operational procedures and digitalize the documents and procedures as requirements for an efficient transit corridor.
The meeting further deliberated on various topics, inter alia, the Action Plan, tariffs, routes, infrastructure development, as well as conducting a test-run to find out the bottlenecks and challenges along the corridor.
The meeting was attended by the delegations from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Republic of Türkiye, and Republic of Uzbekistan. Representatives of the People’s Republic of China, the ECO Trade and Development Bank and International Road Transport Union (IRU) also participated in the event.
The decision for the establishment of the Tajikistan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran-Türkiye Corridor was adopted by the 11thECO Ministerial Meeting on Transport (2 February 2022) at the proposal of Turkmenistan.
