Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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An attempt to put extra attention to the environmental issues is however shown in the CAREC
Railway Strategy 2017-2030. It motivates that the goal to strengthen the railway sector is to
promote a shift from road to rail, which eventually creates positive impacts on the nature,
landscape, and climate.
4.4.9. Corridor Performance Monitoring
In order to measure and monitor the corridor performance, CAREC uses four Trade Facilitation
Indicators (TFIs):
1. TFI1: Time taken to clear a BCP (in hours)
2. TFI2: Cost incurred at border-crossing clearance (in USD)
3. TFI3: Cost incurred to travel a corridor section (in USD per 500 km, per 20-ton cargo).
This cost is a sum of TFI2 and the non BCP cost (which refers to trucks operating cost
or rail tariff rates). 500 km is chosen as the length of a “corridor section”, as this is the
average of distances in the CPMM sample. The same applies to 20 ton as a “unit of
cargo”.
4. TFI4: Speed to travel on CAREC corridors (in kph)
A report on Corridor Performance Measurement & Monitoring is published annually based on
almost 3,000 collected data samples of commercial shipments across Central Asia. This is of
great interest to both policy makers and the private sector operators as it answers questions
as: What are the causes of delays in the CAREC corridors? Where do delays occur and what can
be done to address those problems?
4.4.10. Conclusion
CAREC corridor 3 can be considered as a successful corridor as it performs well among other
CAREC corridors. However, this corridor has not met the set objective to promote intra-trade
along the corridor. The intra trade on corridor 3 is only 8.5% of the trade with rest of the
world. The low trade level justifies the need to increase the efficiency of the corridor, which is
currently hindered by the following:
1. The political tensions among the corridor countries, which are barriers for efficient
and smooth trade flows.
2. Unharmonized transit trade procedures that cause delays at BCPs, which subsequently
causes substantial reduction in travel speed.
3. With the exception of Kazakhstan, automation and ICT application is still very low.
The maturity of the CAREC Overall Institutional Framework plays a very important role in the
success CAREC corridor 3. The corridor management adapts two models: project coordination
and legislative models. The corridor management is imbedded in the legislative committees
that produce policies and legislation that support the corridor development.