International North–South Transport Corridor:
The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, in association with India Ports Global Ltd, conducted a workshop on the ‘Linking Chabahar Port with INSTC’ in Mumbai.
- International North-South Transport Corridor is a multimodal transportation agreement formed with a trilateral agreement between India, Iran and Russia at the Euro-Asian Conference on Transport in 2000.
- It links the Indian Ocean to the Caspian Sea via the Persian Gulf onwards into Russia and Northern Europe.
- The corridor encompasses sea, road and rail routes.
- The main purpose of the corridor was to reduce carriage costs and transit time between India and Russia.
- The transit time is expected to reduce to almost half, once the corridor becomes fully functional.
- The agreement has been ratified by 13 countries namely, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Armenia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Ukraine.
- Chabahar Port is located off the Gulf of Oman in Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan & is the only Iranian port with direct access to the ocean.
