The project to build a navigable waterway from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf has become more important in the wake of Western sanctions against Russia. What is the project? How does it benefit Tajikistan?

Russia and Iran have discussed the possibility of paving the waterway at different levels with other Caspian states. In the summer of 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the Caspian Summit in Ashgabat that he fully endorsed the proposal for the construction of an international North-South transport corridor. The Caspian - Persian Gulf waterway is a key element of this corridor.

"This is a major transportation artery project in the true sense of the word, 7,200 kilometers from St. Petersburg to ports in Iran and India," Putin said.

He added that the launch of the proposed corridor aims to turn the Caspian region into an important international logistics hub. Experts believe that the implementation of the project will provide Russia with the shortest access to the Indian Ocean basin, bypassing the Turkish Strait, allowing it to rebuild and expand its trade chain and build modern transport infrastructure.

"At first, the North-South international transport corridor across the Caspian Sea was planned to connect the Baltic states and India, and for Russia it was just a transit corridor," Vladimir Yevsheev, director of the Russian Center for Socio-Political Studies, said in an interview. However, with the closure of Europe, it could become one of the main routes for goods moving in and out of Russia."

A few years ago, Iran announced that the first step towards achieving a waterway from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf would be to start building a railway between the ports of Anzari and Bandar Abbas. The branch is already under construction and is scheduled to open soon.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, China and others are also interested in paving the proposed waterway and are willing to partially finance the project.

What about Tajikistan? The experts interviewed agreed that the existence of a navigable waterway from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf would certainly be advantageous for the Tower, since the country would actually gain access to the world's oceans not to the south of Iran or Pakistan, but to the west of Turkmenistan or Kazakhstan.

The rationale for this position is simple and clear: Shipping remains the cheapest way to move goods. And a large part of the cost of goods and products comes from transportation.

Reducing transportation costs reduces the cost of goods and thus increases the revenue of freight forwarders, which helps to lower the final price of goods and products. In other words, all market participants will benefit.

However, almost all the experts surveyed described the proposed project as "untenable". Some experts believe the West will try to block construction of the waterway in various ways, as it is seen as a loophole to circumvent sanctions against Russia.

Representatives of a number of international organizations working in Dushanbe were asked for their views on the project, and they all flatly refused to discuss the subject......

It is also argued that Russia is not in a position to invest in the project under the current circumstances and that the cost of the project is high. Editor/Xu Shengpeng