TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iran’s Chabahar Port will soon become the third commercial hub of Iran due to its infrastructure, capacities, and strategic position, said the caretaker of the Ministry of Industry, Mines, and Trade.
According to Hussein Modarres Khiabani, Chabahar has a good opportunity for the transit of goods and exports and Tehran is firmly seeking to develop the far southeastern port to facilitate the process of its development, Mehr News Agency (MNA) reported on July 10.
Chabahar Port’s infrastructure, capacities, and strategic position have enabled it to gain equal importance to two other major Iranian commercial hubs of Bandar Abbas in Hormuzgan province and Imam Khomeini Port in Khuzestan province, south of the country, he added.
Meanwhile Director General of Chabahar Free Trade Zone Organization (FTZ) Abdul Rahim Kordi had said on July 5 that Chabahr will soon outshine the Suez Canal in providing a quicker trade link between Europe and Asia.
The strategic port of Chabahar in southeastern Iran has a special place in the country’s “looking to the East” strategy and can link India to Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Persian Gulf littoral states.
As Iran’s only ocean port on the Makran coast, Chabahar Port is not only important for India’s geopolitical interests in West Asia, but it can also play a key role in pulling landlocked Afghanistan out of its current geographical impasse and provide India with easy and inexpensive access to its new neighbors.
The Chabahar route goes through the Baltic Sea to Russia’s Saint Petersburg and then through the Volga River to Astrakhan from where it travels via the Caspian Sea to Anzali in northern Iran, Press TV reported.
It then travels further south across the lengths of the Iranian territory to Chabahar on the Sea of Oman and then through the Arabian Sea to the Nhava Sheva port in India’s Mumbai.
Speaking in a local meeting, Kordi added Chabahar will become busier once a 580-kilometer railway connecting it to Zahedan, near the eastern Iranian border, comes online.
It will be more than a half shorter than the traditional Suez route taken by large ships to deliver cargoes from Europe to Asia, he said, adding the Chabahar route will decrease the time needed from 38 days to 14-16 days.
- source : Iran Daily, Irannews
