Russian Railways plans to open a representative office in Turkmenistan

Russian Railways Holding (Russian Railways) plans to open a representative office in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. About it reported in the Telegram channel of the Russian company.

It is specified that the President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov and the head Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov held a meeting in Ashgabat, during which they discussed issues of cooperation in the field of railway transport.

“Events of the program of cooperation between Russian and Turkmen railways for 2023–2025. carried out strictly on time, including: <...> upcoming opening of representative offices Russian Railways in Ashgabat and the agency “Turkmendemiryollary” [ «Туркменские железные дороги»] in Moscow,” the statement said.

In addition, among the activities of the cooperation program are joint work to increase transportation and logistics services on the eastern route of the ITC “North-South”, the implementation of infrastructure projects in Turkmenistan, as well as assistance to the Turkmen railways in promoting digital transformation and developing human resources.

“The volume of rail freight transportation is growing both in bilateral traffic and in transit: through Turkmenistan along the North-South ITC to Iran and further to the countries of South Asia and the Persian Gulf. According to the results of the first quarter of 2023, they will amount to about 220,000 tons, which will be twice as high as in 2022,” the report says.

At the press office Russian Railways also spoke about the successful implementation of the project of a new regular logistics service – transportation of containers to Iran by block trains.

March 1 “Vedomosti” with reference to the data Russian Railways wrotethat the carriage of passengers by rail by long-distance trains in February 2023 increased by 42% compared to the same month last year to 7.3 million people. In two months of 2023, they grew by 29% to 16.1 million passengers.

In pre-Covid February 2019 Russian Railways transported 6.6 million people long-distance, and in the first two months of that year – 15.2 million. Thus, at the beginning of 2023, transportation by rail exceeded the pre-pandemic year. In 2020, due to the pandemic and numerous restrictions, long-distance traffic fell by 42.1% to 67.4 million passengers.