ISTANBUL

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said Thursday that the East-West and North-South transport corridors turned his country into one of the transport and logistics hubs on the Eurasian continent.

“The construction of Azerbaijani sections of both corridors have already been completed. Currently, works are underway to expand the cargo handling capacities of the railroads along these two corridors,” Aliyev said at the 16th summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent.

Expressing that Azerbaijan’s transport-logistics infrastructure is accessible to ECO member states, Aliyev said his country invested billions of US dollars into its transportation infrastructure.

“In the last 20 years, more than 310 billion US dollars have been invested in Azerbaijan’s economy, around 200 billion US dollars of which is being invested in the non-energy sector. This is an indicator of a good investment climate in our country,” he said.

Aliyev also said Azerbaijan will turn into a green and hydrogen energy exporter in the near future, indicating that agreements and contracts signed between Baku and foreign investors will enable his country to produce renewable energy up to 10 gigawatts in “the coming years.”

He went on to say that the overall capacity of hydropower plants in Azerbaijan’s territories liberated from Armenian occupation will reach 500 megawatts in “a couple of years.”

“Azerbaijan is determined to further strengthen bilateral and multilateral cooperation with the ECO member states, and we express our readiness to host the next ECO Summit,” he added.

The International North-South Transport Corridor is a 7,200-km (4,473 miles) multimode transportation network established in 2000 that stretches from India, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia via ship, rail and road, goes through Iran and connects South Asia with North Europe.

Meanwhile, the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, also called the Middle or East-West Corridor, is a network of railways and roads that start in Türkiye and covers Georgia, Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea, and Central Asia, and reaches China, making it an important effort to revive the ancient Silk Road.