Moscow’s Plans for North-South Transit Corridor Face Five Serious Problems, Russian Analysts Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 4 – Twenty-five years ago, with great hopes, Russia, India and Iran signed with great fanfare an agreement to open a north-south intermodal transportation corridor between Russia in the north and the Indian Ocean in the south. But progress has been slow and is unlikely to accelerate anytime soon, Russian analysts say on this anniversary.
    They point to five key problems, some of which can be solved by changes in the international environment and the lifting of sanctions against Russia and Iran but many of which will take many years to overcome even if such a change opens the way for more international investment in the project (casp-geo.ru/mtk-sever-yug-chetvert-veka-borby-za-marshrut-i-vzglyad-v-budushhee/).
    These five problems include:
•    Sanctions and the geopolitical tensions that have produced them,
•    Unresolved differences among the three signatories on routes and development,
•    The lack of infrastructure or its lack of correspondence among the trade systems of the countries involved,
•    The absence of a single tariff policy and of the harmonization of procedures at borders, and
•    Growing concerns about the environmental impact of the development of this transit route.
All these need to be kept in mind in assessing Russian and Iranian claims about progress on one of Putin’s favorite projects.