Russia considers delivering postal goods from China through Azerbaijan

 By Azernews

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan, located at the heart of the Silk Road network, has great transit opportunities as a bridge between Europe and Asia. The roads leading from East to West and West to South bypass Azerbaijan, and the country offers huge benefits in the transport sector relying on its developed infrastructure.

Starting in the 2000s, the country embarked upon a national program to rejuvenate its transportation infrastructure in a bid to renew its ancient relevance as a key logistical node in the center of Eurasia, said the article published by Forbes.

Using its mountains of petrodollars, Azerbaijan began building new highways, rail lines, airports, and sea ports across the country. Newly built Baku International Sea Port transforms the country into strategic logistical hub of the region. With the ambition to become a true intermodal transport hub, Baku opened one of the largest air cargo terminals in the CIS.

Due to its favorable position Baku can also become an international hub also for postal mails from Asia to Europe, which is now being widely considered.

Given this huge potential, Russia and Azerbaijan are planning to sign a cooperation agreement in the field of postal services.

Rashid Ismayilov, Deputy Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation said Russia is considering delivering part of goods from China via Azerbaijan since Azerbaijan is a transit country.

"We considered delivery of Chinese goods to Russia by our planes, transshipping them from here [Azerbaijan], but Silk Way [Azerbaijani cargo airline] has opened a subsidiary in Moscow which allows delivering goods directly to Moscow or Yekaterinburg, depending on the necessity," Ismayilov told Trend.

The deputy minister also mentioned about the high-level meeting of working group, held in Baku, where the sides considered the concept for the development of information and communication technologies in the CIS area up to 2025 proposed by Azerbaijan.

"Our companies have established sufficiently serious cooperation with Azerbaijan in IT sphere. Azerbaijan plans to build industrial parks. Today "High-Tech Park" of Azerbaijan is cooperating with the innovation center "Skolkovo". In addition, Minister of Communications and High Technologies of Azerbaijan Ramin Guluzade visited Kazan this summer, and got acquainted with the concept of the work of "Innopolis" technopark," he said.

Director General of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) Bishar Hussein has recently announced that "everything from the Middle East, China, Indonesia, and other countries with developing economies can be delivered to Baku and then sent to the rest of Europe,”, noting that this business can bring trillions of dollars to Azerbaijan.

Posts worldwide are using new technologies to improve existing services, develop new ones, and improve the delivery of mail, parcel, express and financial services. These improvements help Posts meet customers’ evolving needs.

Azerpost, the national post operator, was established in 1999 and received the status of national postal operator in 2004. Currently, Azerbaijan Post cooperates with about 70 countries of the world by IPS System of UPU for tracking of international parcels and about 80 countries by Cricket Inquiring System for searching of parcels promptly. 

One of the biggest achievements of Azerbaijan was the country’s election to the governing bodies of the UPU - Council of Administration and the Postal Operations Council for the first time in the 24th Congress of the Union.

Another success of Azerpost at the international level is its awarding gold-level certificate by UPU EMS Cooperative for the fifth consecutive year among operators in over 160 countries.