Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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4.7.4. Trade Facilitation
INSTC is expected to provide faster and more efficient trade connectivity between Europe and
South East Asia. On this “New Asia Transport Bridge” the cargo will travel in sealed containers.
The corridor is also expected to transport approximately 5 million tons of cargo per year in the
initial stage, expanding over the years to approximately 10 million tons of cargo per year.80
Currently, only less than 5% of this volume is passing INSTC (Soleimani, 2017). This is the
main challenge that is currently faced by this corridor: how to increase trade volume on this
corridor?
This situation is also shown in that outlines exports and imports data between the
corridor countries. The analysis shows that intra trade is only 2.4% of total trade. The new
investments on the INSTC are expected to increase this figure.
Table 54: Trade matrix INSTC
Source: Fimotions (2017), analysis on data o
80 Construction of Rasht-Astara railway may be launched this year, in Azernews 8 January 2017
AZER INDIA IRAN RUS Total World %
AZER 765.71 139.00 412.46 1,317 12,637 10.4%
INDIA 31.63 2,412.54 1,813.88 4,258 260,327 1.6%
IRAN 434.99 2,593.54 375.74 3,404 46,347 7.3%
RUS 1,508.07 5,312.79 1,881.77 8,703 285,491 3.0%
Total 1,975 8,672 4,433 2,602 17,682
World 7,157 356,705 46,129 182,257 604,802
% 27.6% 2.4% 9.6% 1.4% 2.9%
COUNTRY
Imports (Million USD)
Exports (Million
USD)