00:02Countries along the Transcaspian Corridor are trying to turn a patchwork of railways, roads, ports and ferries into a faster
00:09trade road between Central Asia and Europe.
00:12One of the clearest measures of the challenge is time.
00:16TRASECA, the Intergovernmental Commission for Europe, Caucasus, Asia Transport, estimates how long freight currently takes to cross the route.
00:24Today, we estimate about 35 days of transit time.
00:29Of course, the ideal goal is to make it or reach up to 15 or 20 days.
00:36European and Central Asian officials, financial institutions and transport companies met in Tashkent to discuss how to cut those delays.
00:44For the European Union, the route has to work as a whole.
00:47We have to look at the corridor in its entirety, making sure that, first of all, the procedural part of
00:56entire corridor is working as smoothly as possible, making sure that customs procedures are harmonized to the maximum.
01:04The potential impact has now been quantified.
01:08The World Bank estimates that trade along the Transcaspian Corridor could more than triple by 2040.
01:14If investment and reforms improve the route, but infrastructure is only part of the challenge, faster borders, digital systems and
01:22better coordination will also be key.
01:25Paperwork is another major bottleneck.
01:27If somebody wants to ship, for example, from Uzbekistan, train load of cargo to Europe, they don't have to apply
01:36for individual permits in each country along the route.
01:41One agreed system that will then facilitate the movement of this cargo across this route.
01:47The challenge of the corridor is to make it predictable.
01:51The transport companies and logistics companies are interested in a very predictable timeline of the corridor.
01:59Uzbekistan is also expanding its rail links further east.
02:03Today we are building the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan rail corridor.
02:09We are estimating to transport through China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan rail corridor up to 15 million tons of cargo, which we
02:18will address mostly toward the European Union via Uzbekistan.
02:22Tashkent's plan also extends further west.
02:46Around 10 billion euros in investment commitments has been announced by European and international partners
02:53to improve transport connectivity in Central Asia.
