Azerbaijani alumina reaches Tajikistan
Chairman of the Azerbaijan-Russia Business Council Samad Gurbanov made the remarks at a regular meeting of the AzerbaijanRussia Business Council at the Baku Business Center on October 4.
The event was attended by about 40 entrepreneurs and representatives of companies operating in the spheres of food industry, agriculture, construction, logistics and other fields.
Gurbanov said that this meeting is being held as continuation of the expanded meeting of the Azerbaijan-Russia and Russia-Azerbaijan business councils as part of the 9th Azerbaijan-Russia Interregional Forum held on September 27.
This meeting of the AzerbaijanRussia Business Council with exporters was held considering applications and proposals of entrepreneurs related to the expansion of trade and economic relations between the businessmen of both countries, as well as the export of Azerbaijani products to the Russian market.
Azerbaijan is one of the main economic partners of Russia among the CIS countries. Interregional cooperation plays an important role in the development of Russian-Azerbaijani trade and economic relations and the increase in trade turnover.
Russia has been included in the list of Azerbaijan’s five largest trade partners in January-June 2018 with the volume of trade turnover of $ 1.14 billion (8.54 percent of the total volume of trade turnover).
Azerbaijan invested more than $1 billion in the Russian economy, and Russia invested about $4 billion in the economy of Azerbaijan.
The trade turnover between the states amounted to $1.3 billion in January-July 2018, according to State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan. Russia accounts for 7.89 percent of the total foreign trade turnover of Azerbaijan.
This route implies deliveries from Azerbaijan through Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to Tajikistan and thus bypasses Turkmenistan.
In recent times, transit through Turkmenistan has been closed, and trucks with Azerbaijani raw materials have been idle on the Iranian-Turkmen border for about 50 days, a source at TALKO told Trend earlier, adding that the parties are looking for alternative ways to supply raw materials from Baku through the ports of Aktau and Kuryk in Kazakhstan.
This information was confirmed at the port of Aktau, a representative of which said that this issue is being studied between Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.
“On this issue, there was an appeal from TALCO to KTZ Express (transportation operator) on the provision of tariffs and confirmation of the possibility of transshipment of alumina. At the moment, we are waiting for information on its detailed description and scope to determine the possibility of its processing in the port of Aktau,” the port’s representative said.
On the other hand, according to the source at TALKO, there are also problems with the supply of petroleum coke from Turkmenistan to Tajikistan, and therefore the company is looking for additional sources of supply, in particular, from Azerbaijan.
Earlier, the Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Tajikistan, Nematullo Hikmatullozoda, within the framework of the presentation of the country's capabilities at the Azerbaijani-Tajik business meeting, said that Tajikistan is very interested in close cooperation with Azerbaijan in the production and further export of aluminum.
He also noted that an agreement was reached between the Azerbaijani state company SOCAR and TALCO on the import of oil coke from Azerbaijan.
SOCAR told Trend that there is a memorandum of understanding, which implies joint study of the possibilities of cooperation in a particular area, but supplies have not yet been made.
“At the moment, SOCAR does not supply such petroleum products as oil coke to Tajikistan, which, however, does not exclude the possibility of their supply in the future,”said Ibrahim Akhmedov, the head of the press service of the State Oil Company.
Returning to the topic of the transit of alumina, it should be noted that neither Talco nor the Embassy of Tajikistan knows the reasons for the creation of obstacles by the Turkmen side.
According to the latest information, which, however, is not officially confirmed, Ashgabat has already resumed transit to Tajikistan.
As the representative of the Embassy of Tajikistan in Baku said, the commonality and mutual understanding of the peoples and countries of the region should help solve this problem as soon as possible and prevent the occurrence of such obstacles to normal trade and economic relations in the future.
The main part of the volume of trade between Tajikistan and Azerbaijan falls for the production of the State Unitary Enterprise TALKO, which is transported via the Azerbaijan sea and railway routes to Europe. Tajikistan buys alumina, coke and other raw materials in Azerbaijan.
Diplomatic relations between Tajikistan and Azerbaijan were established on May 29, 1992. The legal base of cooperation is fixed by more than 40 agreements in the trade and economic, banking, tax, cultural and investment spheres. The priority areas of economic cooperation between the countries are non-ferrous metallurgy, the agro-industrial complex, energy, light industry, transport and communications.