Russian Railways and the state-owned company Turkmen Railways signed an action plan of the roadmap on digitalization of freight transportation. Signing was held as part of the conference "International Transport and Transit Corridors: Interconnection and Development - 2023," TASS correspondent reports on Thursday.
"It is very comprehensive [digitalization action plan], the one we have signed now is up to 2025. But that does not mean that everything will end in 2025. We are working on the interaction program, which includes the development of new software products, development of joint software products, updating of equipment and, most importantly, training of personnel and training of specialists jointly", First Deputy General Director of JSC Russian Railways Sergey Pavlov told reporters after the document was signed.
He added that Chairman of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov and President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov reached the agreement on training of Turkmen specialists at the Russian Railways Corporate University.
According to Pavlov, during the first quarter of this year, Russian Railways increased the volume of transportation through Turkmenistan 3.5 times. "We plan to outperform these results and achieve even better ones. At the end of the current year, we believe that we will cross the bar of 1 million tons of cargo. <...> This is a 20-fold [increase compared to 2022]," he stressed.
Pavlov also noted that Russian Railways considers the eastern route of the North-South multimodal transport corridor (through Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran) as one of the most promising. "We consider this route as one of the promising ones - our economy needs it today, it is in the constant attention of our government. What we are here today [at the conference] are real steps to increase trade not only with Turkmenistan, but also to increase trade with third countries: we go through Turkmenistan to the Persian Gulf and trade with India, we have already sent several trains," he explained.
The conference and exhibition "International Transport and Transit Corridors: Interconnection and Development - 2023" was held in Ashgabat May 3-4. Representatives of relevant agencies and transport and logistics companies discussed topical challenges and global ways of development of the sectors.
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Based on materials from TASS