The Roscongress Foundation presents the salient points of the publication accompanied by fragments of broadcasts of relevant panel discussions from the business programme of international events held by the Roscongress Foundation.
The development of transport and logistics corridors through Central Asian countries is strategically aligned with Russia’s interests.
The region’s railway networks historically use the Russian 1520 mm gauge standard — a fact that serves as a solid foundation for an integration of the countries’ transportation systems. The construction of new railways expands this common-gauge network, thereby deepening the economic and logistical integration of participating countries with Russia. The deployment of Chinese manufacturing and infrastructure in Central Asia generates local employment, which in turn helps curb labour migration. Furthermore, while this transport and logistics development stimulates regional economic and industrial growth, Russia remains the primary export market for the resulting goods due to its geographic proximity and significant consumption capacity.
The authors of the report point out that the largest share of investment in the development of the Eurasian Transport Framework — almost 70 percent of the total — comes from Russia and Kazakhstan, the countries through which the main Eurasian corridors pass. This may suggest that the most active group of stakeholders in the practical development of the corridors are the transit countries themselves. All corridor initiators operate within the context of Asia-Europe trade, as this is the largest flow of mutual trade. Asia — and above all, China — is the «world’s factory,» while Europe is a major consumer market and the second largest macroregion by volume of container exports. The volume of container exports from Asia to Europe in 2024 was approximately 18 million TEU, while the reverse flow was about three times smaller — around 6 million TEU. In total, this accounts for about 15 percent of all global container trade.
The high activity of the transit countries, particularly Russia and Kazakhstan, is largely explained by the superimposition of the status of cargo flow generator onto their status as transit territories. Each country is far more interested in developing, simplifying, and reducing the cost of logistics for its own foreign trade than in attracting transit traffic, and, no less importantly, in diversifying both that trade and its logistics. Russia and Kazakhstan are the largest countries in the region with significant volumes of foreign trade, and investments in the development of transport networks represent investments in the development of their own socioeconomic framework and trade — both internal and external. But, although they demonstrate the highest absolute investment figures, these nevertheless constitute only 7−8 percent of GDP — three times less than the average for the group of countries reviewed in the report. Meanwhile, the largest relative investments (as a percentage of GDP) are demonstrated by landlocked countries: Afghanistan (86 percent), Kyrgyzstan (47 percent), Mongolia (39 percent), Tajikistan (38 percent), and Armenia (19 percent).
