Turkmenistan Ambassador Nazarguly Shagulyev spoke about his country’s massive development in the transport sector as one of the main factors in the development of the world economy.

The ambassador, who was referring to the new $5 billion causeway between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, made his observation following the International Conference at the ministerial level, held in Ashgabat recently, which was attended by delegations from more than 30 countries including Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

The envoy praised the ongoing Saudi mega projects including railways and the Riyadh metro, noting that his country has also embarked on doing so as a serious factor in geopolitics, a powerful integration resource that can provide greater economic and political preferences for states and regions to promote the interoperability of their strategic interests by joining the vast spaces of production and resource potentials.

“The creation of a modern, extensive and safe international transport infrastructure thus becomes imperative for global development, dictating the necessity of placing the discussion of this issue at the inter-regional and international levels as a separate long-term direction of multilateral cooperation,” Shagulyev said.

He added: “This is particularly important for Turkmenistan, which is located in a favorable geographical position. Based on this, our country has been consistently increasing its transport capacity, initiating and implementing major international and regional projects in the field of transport, designed to bring a new level of international economic and trade cooperation.

Our activity also aims to ensure strategies that give impetus to inter-regional relations in the long term, to lay the foundation of a new geo-economic architecture of the space on the Eurasian continent,” he said adding that in this sense, Turkmenistan stands as an economic bridge between Asia and Europe.

According to him, the key concept of determining the strategy of Turkmenistan in the transport sector is diversification, which “we regard as a decisive factor in the formation of a multivariate international transport infrastructure. Its development is one of the unquestionable priorities of Turkmenistan’s policy pursued by President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.”

In this context, he continued, “our country stands for the creation of new transit-transport and trade corridors in the directions of “East-West” and “North-South,” allowing integration of national transport systems of the various regions of the continent into the global international communications network.”

According to the ambassador, in this case, the importance is given to the initiatives of the President of Turkmenistan to develop effective transport routes between the Caspian, Black and Baltic Seas. Along with these activities is the formation of the transport network bringing together regions of Central, South and Southeast Asia with the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The practical implementation of these ideas comes to life through the construction of new railways and motor roads and the activation of sea routes.

“As is known, the longest section of the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway has a length of about 1,000 kilometers. Today, by means of this route, it will be possible to connect a large number of countries and regions in the North, West and East Eurasia and the South of the continent with the shortest and most economical routes.

At the same time, our country has begun the construction of a new railway, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan, which is designed to serve as a link between the Central Asian region and South Asia. Another important transportation project — a transit corridor — Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran-Oman, has also been created.

Based on the aforesaid, the Turkmen side notes that Turkmenistan will continue to pursue active transport policies aimed at addressing the global challenges facing the international community in the context of sustainable development,” the envoy concluded.