TEHRAN- Iranian Transport and Urban Development Minister Mohammad Eslami said the country is capable of boosting its capacity of transit of commodities to 50 million tons per year, IRIB reported.

Making the remarks in a ceremony to celebrate the National Transportation Day on Tuesday, the minister stressed that a double effort is required to achieve this goal.

“We should make an essential improvement in our logistics power to gain our share of transit”, Eslami further emphasized.

Putting the annual transit capacity of Iran at 10 million tons, the minister said 20 percent of this capacity is through railway and the rest 80 percent is via roads.

Iran aims to increase its transport capacity through International North South Transit Corridor (INSTC).

INSTC is a 7,200-km-long multi-mode network of ship, rail, and road route for moving freight between India, Iran, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia and Europe.

The route primarily involves moving freight from India, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia via ship, rail and road.

The objective of the corridor is to increase trade connectivity between major cities such as Mumbai, Moscow, Tehran, Baku, Bandar Abbas, Astrakhan, Bandar Anzali, etc.

Russia, Iran and India signed the agreement for the NSTC project on May 16, 2002. All three countries are founding member states on the project. Other important member states include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Belarus with other states having varying levels of involvement.

MA/MA