March news, 2024

✔️ According to Azerbaijani media, in recent years, Azerbaijan has been actively working to expand the capabilities of the combined sea and rail component of the Middle Corridor, which also includes the transportation of goods via the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway and Baku port. As Hikmat Hajiyev, aide to the President of Azerbaijan, said, Azerbaijan is investing to increase the capacity of Baku's Alat port to reach 25 million tons per year.

"Azerbaijan recently started making additional investments together with Georgia in order to increase the capacity of the Georgian segment of BTK. We also agreed with our Turkish colleagues to build a railway from Kars to Nakhichevan," said the assistant to the President of Azerbaijan. The 230-kilometer line will start from Karsi-Igdir and continue to Nakhichevan. From there the railway line will connect to Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan lines. Thus, Turkey will have a great advantage in logistics. This will significantly reduce the time of cargo transportation between Asia and Europe, which is a necessary condition for attracting additional cargo flows. At the initial stage, after modernization, the volume of cargo transportation through BTK will be 5 million tons per year.

✔️ Hong Kong-based company Kerry Logistics considers Uzbekistan as a major player in the Middle Corridor. According to the company, Uzbekistan's strategic location covering important trade routes makes it a critical hub for this corridor.

✔️ On March 10, the President of Kazakhstan Kasim-Zhomart Tokaev stated that the role of the Middle Corridor in the promotion and development of transcontinental trade has grown rapidly. This is evidenced by the volume of cargo transportation on this route, which doubled in 2022, and increased by another 65% in 2023 to 2.7 million tons of cargo (2022 - 1.7 million tons). In the future, we expect this amount to reach 10 million tons.

✔️ On March 11, the Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan Alim Bayil said during the 2nd meeting of the Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan Business Council that Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are implementing large regional projects. According to him, this includes development projects of the Middle Corridor, the laying of an optical fiber communication line on the bottom of the Caspian Sea, and more.

✔️ Vakhtang Abashidze, a member of the Communication Commission, hopes that the process of Georgia's joining the European Union roaming space will be completed by the end of the year. He talked about it with journalists. "If you join this system, any of you will have the same prices for mobile and internet roaming when traveling in EU countries as in Georgia. Just as an EU citizen arriving here will have the same price for services as they would in their home country. In the end, this will be an acceptable decision by the European structures, but we hope that it will be implemented by the end of the year", Abashidze told journalists.

✔️ The container train completed the China-Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan route in 11 days. The time of cargo delivery to the Black Sea ports through the Middle Corridor has been reduced to 18 days.

✔️ Within the framework of Anaklia port project, the state, in addition to sea dredging works, undertakes to organize access road and railway infrastructure to Anaklia port. The government announced an international tender for the construction of the marine infrastructure of Anaklia port on March 18. It is not known at this stage how many millions the state will spend for the design and construction of the marine infrastructure of Anaklia port. The Ministry of Economy explains that the bidding companies must submit their financial proposals together with the technical proposal, and the winner will be determined by considering these two proposals jointly.

This happens even in the conditions when the state does not yet have a project investor. The identity of the investor, i.e. the owner of 49% of the port, should have been known already, but the selection of the partner was postponed until May. It is not known who exactly is interested in building Anaklia port in Georgia, the government only says that two large consortiums - Swiss-Luxembourg and Chinese-Singaporean companies - want to implement the Anaklia port project.

✔️ Tender documentation for the design and construction work of the marine infrastructure of the port of Anaklia were sent to the "big four companies" (Boskalis, DEME, Jan De Nul, Van Oord). As the Ministry of Economy of Georgia explains, these companies have rich experience in designing and manufacturing marine work. In addition, it is emphasized that a large share of the port's marine work comes from dredging, and the mentioned companies own 80% of the global dredging/dredging fleet.

"The expediency of sending the tender documents for the purchase of work to European companies (the "big four") was revealed as a result of the consultation with the international consulting company HAEDES B.V. The mentioned company was hired by "Anaklia Sea Port" LLC. for the purpose of timely, reliable and high-quality execution of work, preparation of technical tasks and selection and evaluation of proposals presented later," the Ministry writes.

To which companies were sent the tender documents related to the port of Anaklia:

Boskalis - a Dutch company. Among his projects is the reconstruction of the port city of Duq on the Arabian Sea coast.

DEME - “Although our roots are in Belgium, DEME has built a strong presence around the world. We operate one of the largest and most technologically advanced fleets of vessels in the world, supported by a wide range of support equipment,” is how the company introduces itself.

Jan De Nul - a Belgian company with its financial headquarters located in Luxembourg, which provides marine infrastructure construction and maintenance services on an international basis. Its main direction is drainage, which accounts for 85% of its turnover.

Van Oord - a Dutch marine contracting company specializing in dredging, land reclamation and the construction of artificial islands. Royal Van Oord has undertaken many projects around the world, including land reclamation, dredging and beach provision.

✔️ In the United Arab Emirates, a memorandum was signed about Tbilisi Dry Port. The project will be implemented by the largest Arab corporation ADP together with the Georgian partner "Tbilisi Dry Port" LLC. Tbilisi Dry Port envisages the development of integrated port-logistics facilities that will serve not only Georgia, but also the wider region. In particular, the project includes container yards, the annual throughput of which will be approximately 200,000 TEU, and customs warehousing (class A and B warehouses with a total area of 12,300 m2). At the signing, it was noted that the project will promote the Middle Corridor passing through Georgia and will encourage other investors to be interested in investing in the transport and logistics sector of Georgia.

TRACECA.GE

Source: bm.ge/europetime.eu/agrokavkaz.ge