Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan held the first trilateral meeting of the working group on transport and communications cooperation on Monday, Turkmenistan’s Golden Age news outlet reported on Tuesday.
According to the report, the high-ranking officials of the three countries attended the meeting, which was held in a video conference format.
The working group members considered, as a first step for the practical implementation of the single logistics center for the Lapis Lazuli Corridor, the possibility of creating a structure coordinating logistics activities in the trilateral format Afghanistan-Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan and discussed its organizational and legal framework.
The parties also exchanged views on pricing policy for the carriage of goods along this route, the basis of which should be the desire to create optimal economic and financial conditions equal for all participants in the partnership in the transport sector, according to the report.
The videoconference participants also considered possible mechanisms for providing each other with various benefits, including a decrease in transit tariffs, exemption from payment for certain types of services when storing goods.
The agenda of the meeting also included the issue of preparing a digital atlas of the Afghanistan-Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan route. Türkmenawtoulaglary Agency is currently working on the digitalization of vehicles by installing GPS trackers on cars and trucks to provide information about their geolocation, technical condition, and fuel consumption.
The sides also discussed the creation of a single GIS-map with a geographic information system for the three countries. It includes the collection, storage, analysis and graphical visualization of spatial and geographical data and related information about the necessary facilities, including railways and roads, stations, sea and land ports, airports, cargo yards, buildings and other infrastructure facilities.
The meeting participants of the working group also considered issues of cooperation in the field of telecommunications.
Turkmenistan is presently carrying out two important projects in this direction - the construction of a fiber-optic cable along the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan route and a fiber-optic cable between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan through the bottom of the Caspian Sea.
