Afghanistan to increase turnover by 50pct thanks to Mazar-i-Sharif-Herat railway
By Kamila Aliyeva
The commissioning of the Mazar-i-Sharif-Herat railway will allow Afghanistan to increase trade by 50 percent.
This was stated by the head of the Information and Analytical Center for International Relations under the Uzbek Foreign Ministry, Eldor Aripov, at the opening of the press center of the high-level international conference “Peace Process, Security Cooperation and Regional Interaction” to be held on March 26-27.
“We hope that the construction of the railway to Herat will play an important role in the socio-economic development of Afghanistan. According to preliminary data, the implementation of this project will increase the turnover of Afghanistan by about 50 percent,” he said .
At the same time, Aripov pointed to the strategic importance of this project, which “will enable Afghanistan, Central and South Asian countries to enter promising markets in almost all directions.”
“If we look at the figures for loading this railway line, then in a year it may reach about 5 million tons, later this figure could grow to 15 million tons,” he said.
The Mazar-i-Sharif-Herat project envisages the construction of more than 5,000 linear and multi-module units, including the railway from Herat to Kunduz. Its cost is about $11.2 billion.
Uzbekistan constructed the first long-distance railroad Hairatan-Mazar-i-Sharif stretching 75 kilometers in Afghanistan in November 2010. The project worth $129 million was financed by the Asian Development Bank.
Afghanistan is a small player in terms of international trade. Its total international trade in 2016-2017 financial year stood at just over $7 billion, out of which some $ 6.5 billion ($ 6534 million) are Afghanistan’s imports while exports are a mere $596 million. During this period, only three countries – namely Iran, Pakistan, and China – contributed around half of Afghanistan’s total imports, each exporting goods worth more than $1 billion to the country.
Adding the exports of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan ($621 million and $399 million respectively) to Afghanistan, Kabul imports more than 60 percent of its total imported goods from just five neighboring countries.
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