Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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Recognizing the huge opportunity for CAREC countries to work together to tackle the road
safety challenge, the 14th Ministerial Conference (September 2015, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia),
endorsed a joint commitment to road safety. This commitment calls for adoption of the "safe
systems" approach, combining safer road infrastructure, safer vehicles and safer road users. It
aims to reduce the number of fatalities on the CAREC road corridors by 50% by 2030
(compared to 2010). This translates to 23,000 lives saved and 250,000 serious injuries
prevented per year by 2030. The estimated economic savings amounts to approximately $16
billion a year.
The Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement by WTO is the internationally recognized
set for ensuring the safety of food and agricultural products. This agreement is binding on all
WTO Members. From all countries on corridor 3, only Uzbekistan is not a WTO member. As
such, Uzbekistan is still using the State Standards (GOST) inherited from the former Soviet
Union, which are not WTO compliant, hence they are not recognized by most trading countries.
This leads to duplication of certification when the shipment passes through different countries.
4.4.7. Technical and Operational Factors
Even though CAREC corridors can be considered as mature transport corridors, they do not
possess corridor traffic data such as statistics of heavy goods vehicles and origin-destination
data. The secretariat also does not maintain a trade database. Instead they prepare analyses as
needed using IMF Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) and ADB in-house sources. 43
Furthermore, procedure harmonization and interoperability remain a challenge44 . For road
transport, unharmonized transit trade procedures can be observed on BCPs. As shown i
loading/unloading activity counts for 26% of the total time spent on BCPs. This activity
relates to trans-loading of cargoes to locally registered vehicles because vehicle standards are
different between countries.
Unharmonized procedures are also observed in rail transport. In order to perform
international rail freight movements, shippers must deal with several railways for various
services such as getting tariffs (due to the absence of common railway tariff), finding freight
wagons, handling custom issues, and making security arrangements.
Moreover, there are three different rail gauge-groups within CAREC region: (1) 1,435 mm
standard gauge used in the PRC; (2) 1,520 mm gauge used in CIS countries; and (3) 1,676 mm
broad gauge used in Pakistan. These different technical standards hinder smooth long haul rail
operations. This is not the case for railways within corridor 3. This corridor is characterized
by 1,520 mm gauge only and is partly electrified. The railway on corridor 3a is mostly double-
tracked and on corridor 3b is only single-tracked.
43 CAREC Secretariat (2017).
44 Based on CAREC’s response on online survey undertaken by Fimotions (2017).