EBRD: Middle Corridor should become full-fledged economic corridor

The opportunities offered by the Middle Corridor extend far beyond the transport sector, Nataly Mouravidze, Head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Office in Azerbaijan, stated at the EU-Azerbaijan Business Forum in Baku, Report informs.

"The prospects opened up by the Middle Corridor go far beyond the transport sector and include attracting investments, creating new jobs, and expanding the private sector in the region," Mouravidze stated.

She emphasized that in addition to infrastructure modernization, the key task at this stage remains ensuring the effective, transparent, and commercially sustainable functioning of the corridor as an integrated system.

As the EBRD representative noted, priority attention should be directed toward targeted investments in critical infrastructure points - ports, rail and maritime facilities, and intermodal hubs - as well as the implementation of digital solutions and the harmonization of procedures.

"The measure of success should be not only the number of containers passing through the corridor, but also the scale of investments and business activity that it generates," Mouravidze noted.

The head of the office also pointed out that the ultimate goal is to turn the transport corridor into a fully-fledged economic route that fosters the development of logistics services, processing industries, manufacturing capacities, and export potential.