The port of Nizhny Novgorod, on the northern bank of the Volga, is already connected by waterways to the Baltic and White Seas in the north, and the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea in the south. The new port will be built “across the road”, on the southern bank of the Volga, in the town of Bor.
“We expect that (the new port) will significantly increase the volume of river deliveries and enable Nizhny Novgorod companies to reach international markets via the Caspian Lake and the Black Sea basin,” Nizhny Novgorod Oblast Governor Gleb Nikitin said.
As part of the expansion of the special economic zone in the Nizhnegorod region next to the port, the construction of new production facilities is also planned, and ten companies from the metallurgical sector, logistics and agricultural processing industry have pledged to invest, the Interfax news agency reports.
The new river port builds on the construction of transport infrastructure within the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which should connect the Baltic Sea with the Indian Ocean via the Caspian Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.
The corridor stretches from St. Petersburg in the Gulf of Finland, through Moscow and Volgograd, to the Caspian Lake, which, in addition to Russia, also has access to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan. From the Russian port of Astrakhan, ships would reach the Iranian port of Bandar e-Anzali via the Caspian Lake.
The connection would continue by rail and road to the Iranian port on the coast of the Strait of Hormuz, Bandar Abbas, which would then be connected by ships across the Indian Ocean to Mumbai. The plan also envisages the construction of roads along the coast of the Caspian Lake in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan.
The contract on the construction of this 7,200 kilometer long transport route was signed in 2000 by Russia, Iran and India, and was later joined by Azerbaijan, Belarus and the countries of Central Asia.
So far, 75 percent of the planned infrastructure has been completed, and the work is progressing well despite the geopolitical instability in the Middle East, the Gulf Research Center (GRC) institute based in Saudi Arabia, which focuses on the wider Persian Gulf region, which includes Iran, Iraq and Yemen in addition to the six members of the GCC Cooperation Council, assessed in June of this year.
The construction of infrastructure on the north-south corridor was also the topic of a summit where the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan gathered in Dushanbe in early October, expressing their desire for joint development of this project, according to a report by Asia News.
The North-South Corridor is particularly important for Moscow, as the transport of goods across the Caspian Lake allows it to avoid severe Western sanctions. So, for example, in 2024, Russian trade with Iran increased by 16 percent, to 4.8 billion dollars.
According to data from the Croatian encyclopedia, the commodity exchange on the Caspian Lake is dominated by oil, followed by wood, cereals, cotton, rice and sodium sulfate.
(Vijesti.ba / HINA)
