The consignment will reach Mumbai port via Bandar Abbas port in Iran, ET has learnt. “For the first time, two trains with Kuzbass coal headed to India along the International North-South Transport Corridor. The trains set off from the Kemerovo region. They followed along the eastern branch of the INSTC through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas,” Russian Railways said on Monday in a statement.
On Wednesday addressing key geo-political platform – Primakov Reading – in Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, “India is a key priority for us, 60% of trade is in national currencies now.”
The visit of the PM would give further boost to INSTC and there are plans to link it with the Chabahar Port. There are three international transport corridor routes under INSTC trans-Caspian (railways and ports), as well as western and eastern (overland). There are plans to link INSTC with the North Sea Route of the Arctic in future.
The INSTC is a multimodal route from St. Petersburg to Mumbai and has helped to push Indo-Russian bilateral trade since 2022. Construction of the INSTC started in the early 2000s, but developing it further has taken on a new impetus in light of the restrictions facing Moscow. The route is an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The delivery time for goods from Russia to India via the INSTC is around 23 days, which is faster than shipping via the Suez Canal, which typically takes up to 45 days, according to Russian Railways.Moscow is seeking to both ensure interconnectivity throughout the INSTC and launch regular freight shipping lines, President Vladimir Putin has said. The volume of goods shipped via the INSTC is expected to almost triple over the next seven years. Putin has suggested establishing a logistics hub for the corridor along the African coast.Meanwhile, sources in Moscow have dismissed Pakistan’s plan to join INSTC which is a connectivity route to connect Russia with Iran via Mumbai and there are plans to connect Chahbahar port with INSTC in future. Pakistan in a bizarre announcement claimed that it has been invited to join INSTC.
India has been ramping up purchases of both coking and thermal coal from Russia since Moscow redirected exports from EU countries and offered substantial discounts to Asian buyers. India continues to rely on coal as its primary source of power generation.
