Participants in the 38th meeting of the Council of Managers and Responsible Representatives of Railway Transport of the Organization for Cooperation between Railways (OSJD), taking place on April 15-19 in the capital of Turkmenistan, adopted the Ashgabat Declaration.

 “During the Conference, a wide range of issues in the field of international rail transportation were discussed and the relevance of further development and improvement of international rail transportation, primarily in communication between Europe and Asia, the formation of a coordinated transport policy in the field of international rail transportation, and further improvement of international legal treaties regulating  sphere of international railway transport,” says the declaration published on April 19 in the media of Turkmenistan.

 “The Conference participants emphasized the need to further expand cooperation between OSJD member countries in resolving issues related to economic, informational, scientific, technical and environmental aspects of railway transport, developing measures to increase the competitiveness of railway transport in relation to other modes of transport, cooperation in the field of operation of railways  roads and technical issues related to the further development of international rail transport;  as well as cooperation with other international organizations involved in railway transport issues.”

 As noted in the declaration, “the conference participants noted the initiative and efforts of Turkmenistan in adopting resolutions of the UN General Assembly in the field of ensuring comprehensive interaction between all modes of transport in order to promote the creation of multimodal transit corridors, as well as the importance of the role of transport in achieving sustainable development goals.”

“The conference participants noted the efforts of Turkmenistan to comprehensively implement the transit and transport potential of the country, located at a strategically important and advantageous crossroads of international transport corridors,” the declaration noted.

 “As a result of the Conference, significant decisions were made in the field of passenger and freight transportation, infrastructure and rolling stock, coding and computer science, finance and payments for international passenger and freight rail transportation, as well as vocational education/training in the field of rail transportation,”   declaration claims.

 - The Ashgabat Declaration will give a new impetus to OSJD cooperation with Turkmenistan, which is located at the crossroads of international corridors and in the heart of the Silk Road.  This includes the increasingly relevant Middle Corridor, the CASCA+ route, and the North-South direction, including the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway,” said OSJD Chairman Miroslav Antonovich in an interview with the Turkmen news agency Orient.

 “The Declaration, which is an annex to the Minutes of the meeting, emphasizes the importance of further implementation of the provisions of the UN General Assembly resolutions on transport initiated by Turkmenistan,” Antonovich noted.

 The meeting was attended by railway delegations from Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Belarus, Hungary, Vietnam, Georgia, China, Iran, the Republic of Korea, North Korea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Mongolia, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Czech Republic  and Estonia.