TEHRAN- In a Monday meeting in Tehran, the President of the National Railway Company of Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan Temir Zholy) Kanat Alpysbayev and General Director of Iranian Railways Saeed Mohammadzadeh discussed the issues of further strengthening relations between the railways of Kazakhstan and Iran to develop transit-transport potentials of the two countries.

According to the portal of Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, in this meeting the sides discussed the issues of attracting additional cargo flows to the railway line Uzen – Bolashak – Serhetyaka – Akala/Sarakhs and set tariff rates for the period from March 1 until December 31, 2017.

They also conferred on providing Iran with Kazakh products of railway engineering including passenger cars Tulpar-Talgo, electric locomotives, turnouts, rails and a number of other items.

As IRNA quoted the Kazakh official, in 2016, the volume of railway traffic between Kazakhstan and Iran increased by 16 percent, in comparison with 2015.

“In 2016, about 2.2 million tons of goods were transported from Kazakhstan to Iran,” Alpysbayev said hoping that the figure would grow to 3.3 million in 2017.

The Iranian official for his part said that in case the two sides agree to cooperate on joint building of wagons, the Iranian technicians will support technical issues and will do the pricing procedure.

As accorded, a meeting will be held in two weeks between Iranian and Kazakh railway officials to hash out various cooperation issues including finance, transportation tariffs, technical conditions, and pricing of wagons.  

HJ/MA