The World Bank is actively engaged in identifying and resolving issues associated with the Middle Corridor, a vital transportation and trade route connecting Asia and Europe. Winnie Wang, lead infrastructure specialist and program leader for Europe and Central Asia at the World Bank spoke on these bottleneck an infrastructure issues at the 8th Trans - Caspian forum hosted by the Caspian Policy Center (CPC) in Washington D.C on May 21 Trend reports.
“We see great impacts when projects are designed to address specific bottlenecks and to define the level of service. To this end, at the World Bank, we have employed a number of regional and global monitoring tools to give the corridor solutions.... We estimated a cost of priority investments at about $7 billion in order to address bottlenecks,” she mentioned.
Earlier Daryo reported that The World Bank in collaboration with various governments and multilateral organizations, is ramping up efforts to fully harness the corridor’s potential. The Middle Corridor aims to enhance connectivity between eastern Asia, including China, and the European markets. This ambitious initiative plans to establish an extensive network of roads, railways, and sea routes, potentially boosting trade and driving economic growth.
“Corridors are multidimensional and beyond just the transport infrastructure. They are about trade policies, trade finance logistics services, and support for the value-chain development, as well as training and education, developing this emerging corridor will require logistic and policy coordination,” Wang added.
This strategic route which serves as an alternative to the traditional Northern and Southern Corridors, spans from China through Central Asian countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, across the Caspian Sea and then continues through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Türkiye before reaching Europe.
“One of the defining characteristics of the Middle Corridor is its multimodal nature. This hurdle can be turned into an opportunity to use all elements of the system and to decarbonize transport,” she added.
With Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan at the forefront of this strategic route, the Middle Corridor aims to triple trade flows and halve travel times by 2030, positioning these Central Asian nations as key economic hubs.
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