During President Ilham Aliyev's state visit to to People's Republic of China, the meetings have focused on the relations between the countries, and it's been noted that the president visit will be an important stage in the future development of the Azerbaijan - China partnership. President I. Aliyev has reminded that our countries have successfully co-operated in political and economical areas and said that Azerbaijan supports the establishment of an economic strip over the ancient Silk Road, an initiative proposed by the chairman president. He has also stressed the importance of our country becoming a main transit participant in this project. By drawing the attention to the fact that Azerbaijan is situated on the ancient Silk Road, the president said that our country has a favorable geographical location and infrastructure capabilities in transferring Chinese goods from Turkey and from there to Europe. He has added that the Azerbaijan might be the shortest route to transfer Chinese goods to Europe. It was noted that, Azerbaijan may play an important role in he East-West and North-South transit corridor projects and concrete steps have been taken in this direction.
Chairman of the Center for Economic and Social Development, economist Vugar Bayramli shares his thoughts on the subject with "Kaspi" and said that the freight transport has become the top priority non oil sector for Azerbaijan. According to him, establishment of the coordination council for international freight transport in Azerbaijan and granting it many powers , in accordance with the Oct.21 decree of the President, also serves this purpose: " The coordination committee has the authority to simplify the procedures related to the shipment of the international freight transport, facilitating the access to and out of country, digitalization, lowering the tariffs all of which are positive and radical issues that will affect the transportation. The optimization process of reviewing of the tariffs is complete. The digitalization process has also been concluded. From 2016, Azerbaijan will have the opportunity to become the the hub for international cargo transportation in the region. Its infrastructure also allows Azerbaijan to host international cargo transportation, as a transit country.
China-Azerbaijan relations are very important in this context. Developing the road traffic infrastructure, building of a seaport in Alat settlement and launching Baku-Tbilisi -Kars railroad in the near future will increase our importance as a transit country to transport cargo. Procedures are becoming simpler and the tariffs are lowered so that there is an increase in the amount of cargos being transited through Azerbaijan. Revenue generated from this will be additional source of income to improve this non-oil sector. Due to its favorable geographical location, Azerbaijan may play an important role as a transit country between Asia and Europe. If we take into account that large amounts of goods are being transported from Chine to Europe through Turkey, and vise versa, it will allow Azerbaijan to make big profit as a transit country. And this means that international cargo transportation will become the top priority non-oil sector."
The chairman of "Economics" Association for International Economic Studies (AIES) ", Fikret Yusifov stated that,
for a long time China has thought about creating a more affordable transport corridor to the West-Europe. According to the economist, logistics is a serious problem in China who has achieved great economic success. That is why Azerbaijan is so important for China: " Based on the information by Chinese officials, logistics expenses account for 18-20 % of country's GDP. This is twice as much as the logistics expenses in analogical developed countries. It is obvious that, economic efficiency of the goods that are transported to the West through the sea and whose size is 100 bigger than that of goods that are transported by land, decreases over time. Transportation of such goods via vehicles and railways will result in price reduction but also will make them more competitive and profitable. That's why there's no alternative to cars, as well as railways when it comes to connecting Asia and Europe in the shortest route. China is very interested in implementing these plans with the help of Azerbaijan who has a very suitable geographical location. Transporting the goods, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, through the territory of Azerbaijan will bring in additional millions of dollars to Azerbaijan's state budget. And this, in turn, will be a very serious step in the development of the non-oil sector in Azerbaijan and reducing the dependency of the economy on oil to bare minimum".
Former deputy, economist Ali Alirzayev stressed the important geographical location of Azerbaijan while he was sharing his opinion with our newspaper. He told us that Azerbaijan may be a transit road between East-West, North-South, as well as Europe-Asia and may gain political dividend out of it: "Azerbaijan is a safe transit territory for many countries. The vast transit capacities is a main resource in every country's economic development. This is also an important step in the development of the non oil sector. In that regard, as it was in the past, Silk Road is still an important economic project"
Rufik ISMAYILOV
