ASTANA – During the meeting of the Kazakh-Chinese joint commission on road transportation, the first three Chinese trucks weighing 80 tons departed from Urumqi and were loaded onto a ferry at the Kuryk port in Aktau on May 23 to continue along the China-Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan-Georgia route, reported the Kazakh Transport Ministry’s press service.
Photo credit: Kazakh Ministry of Transport
Chairman of the Road Transport and Transport Control Committee Ali Altai noted that the agreement signed last year with China on road transportation has become a key point of mutually beneficial cooperation, opening up limitless opportunities and prospects for the further development of trade relations.
“For the first time in history, vehicles of the two countries have access to directly travel to all major trading cities of the parties and even transit through the territories,” he said.
Middle Corridor. Photo credit: TITR
According to Altai, to date, hundreds of millions of tons of cargo from China to Western countries are delivered by sea, taking up to 52 days, while a smaller volume of cargo is transported by rail in up to 22 days. Road transportation can reduce these transit times to 12 days, offering door-to-door delivery without intermediate loading or unloading.
Furthermore, the transport departments of the two states discussed an additional exchange of permit forms for 2024 and 2025. The number of permit forms for 2024 is set at 120,000, and next year, the process is planned to be digitized, transitioning to electronic permit forms. The parties agreed that permit forms would be issued in unlimited quantities.
In 2023, the volume of cargo transportation increased 1.5 times to 1.8 million tons. In the first quarter of 2024, this volume grew 63% to 450,100 tons. The primary cargo transported includes paper and paper pulp products, finished food products, wood products, machinery, mechanisms and equipment, and animal products.
