Turkmenistan has become the hub of regional connectivity and pioneer of collective socio-economic prosperity. Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has great vision of national macro-economic sustainability and diversification of resources due to which now his country is gradually but surely inching towards a smarter economy.
Strategic Geography
Turkmenistan has a strategic geography which is located at an important crossroads of regional and continental transport routes. It played a significance role in the formation of a modern multimodal transit-transport and logistics infrastructure and in the revival of the qualitative Great Silk Road.
To further strengthen its geographic position and enhance its comparative advantage of blue economy, Turkmenistan inaugurated a new international sea port in the Caspian coast of Turkmenbashi on May 2, 2018. It was started in 2014. It is hoped that Turkmenbashi will provide great opportunities for sending cargoes arriving to Turkmenbashi along the Silk Road from Asian and Pacific countries further to Europe via ports of Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran.
Turkmenbashi Seaport
Turkmenbashi Seaport will constitute an important economic activity in terms of development and integration in the regional as well as world economic markets. The seaport is expected to play an important role in the strengthening of economic growth in the country. It is hoped that the transportation sector will be further strengthened in terms of economic and regional balanced development, as well as also having a great influence on national integration to the world economic market.
Turkmenbashi Seaport Multiplier Effects
Turkmenbashi Seaport has great strategic value, enhancing Turkmenistan’s importance in the whole region. It extended Turkmenistan’s importance from Central Asian Region, South Caucasus, Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia and the Fareast. The port will provide facilities of warehousing, transshipment, transit, coastal trade, provision of commercial and industrial facilities for international export-import trade, especially that of Afghanistan, Central Asian States, Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia and other countries. It has a transcontinental character.
| Actors of Economy | Details |
| Economic Development | It will fuel Turkmenistan’s economic development. It will make it more diversified and smarter. It will enhance its exports and enhance its industrialization process. It will be a valuation addition for local customers. |
| Development of Turkmen Cities | It will spur economic activities around so many Turkmen cities like construction, banking, finance, Insurance, logistic etc. |
| Job Generation | It will generate many direct and indirect new jobs in the country. It will widen choice of local people. |
| Environment friendly | It is an environment friendly seaport. It is cost and time effective seaport. |
| Regional & World Economic Integration | It will enhance process and system of globalization. |
| Development of Infrastructure | It will further develop its infrastructure including railways, roads & inland waterways. Such infrastructure makes our exports more competitive and as a spillover effect provide world class infrastructure to citizens. |
Shipbuilding Plant
It is hoped that the shipbuilding plant will be a value addition for its macro-economy. In addition to assembly of vessels, the complete cycle of works on repair of ships (tankers, dry cargo ships, tows) will also be carried out. It was built by Turkey’s Gap İnşaat Company with cost of $ 1.5 billion. It was awarded by the State Service of Maritime and River Transportation of Turkmenistan It is a state-of-the-art seaport. Annual capacity of the port will be 17-18 million tons.
GAP İnşaat Company
According to Turkmen media the total area of the new port will be over 1.4 million square meters. It will be main passenger harbor and cargo port and the largest seaport in Turkmenistan as well as Central Asia Region (CAR). As part of the contract GAP İnşaat was advised to appoint a third-party Test Inspection and Certification (TIC) company. It is a standard international practice for executing large international infrastructure projects as it ensures all relevant parties that the construction meets technical requirements, and that the installation and systems can be safely operated throughout the life-cycle of the installation by personnel and the public alike.
As an independent third-party conformity assessment body, RINA was appointed by GAP İnşaat to provide design verification, site supervision and procurement inspections. It was also to confirm that equipment, machine, and material would have a relatively long continuous useful life, longer durability without requiring an inordinate degree of maintenance and consequently guarantee cost saving during the exercise.
RINA verified its design and operationalization process and also guaranteed to all parties that the level of construction quality met the specifications as defined by the contract and/ or the relevant Standards and Codes. Site inspection activities covered all construction phases (pre-fabrication, construction, erection, sampling and testing, pre-commissioning and commissioning) and all disciplines. A dedicated team of expats and locals was deployed to cover the main disciplines of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering.
H.E. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov
H.E. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov emphasized that Turkmenistan is a transport corridor in the East-West and North-South directions providing entry into the largest world markets and operationalization and channelization of seaport will further enhance its geographic importance. It will enhance economic and trade cooperation between the countries of Asia and Europe and will open huge opportunities for optimization of traffic flows on the Euro-Asian space.
Turkmenistan’s International Türkmenbashı Seaport is built on the seashore of the Caspian Sea, the biggest one of the regions that has become a sea uniting the countries, not parting them apart.
Seaport’s Operationalization & Channelization
| General loading terminal, terminals of shipment of loose goods and polypropylene, ship-building and ship-repair plants | |
| Port handling capacity | 17-18 million tons of freights a year is more than 1.4 million square meters, the extent of the mooring line 3.8 thousand meters. |
| Car-and-Passenger Ferry Terminal | It occupies the total area of 230 thousand square meters. Several ships can be moored to its mooring at the same time. It will be able to serve 300 thousand passengers and 75 thousand trailers a year. |
| Container Terminal | It has annual average capacity of 400 thousand TEU occupies the territory of 249 thousand square meters. |
| Multimodal Logistic Park | It will perform a range of services on storage and the combined handling of the containerized cargoes delivered by Avia by car and by rail, providing their overload on a water transport and back. |
| Terminal of General Freights | Its capacity will average 4 million tons of freights a year. It is expected acceptance and sending various construction materials, iron, steel, wood, machines, and the equipment. |
Eco Friendly Port
It is constructed in compliance with the “Eco Friendly Port” standards, nesting locations on birds’ migration routes are being turned into a special bird sanctuary as a sign of GAP İnşaat’s respect for nature. Turkmenbashi International Port is a gateway linking various cities on the world’s biggest lake. It will be a bridge between Central Asia and both the Middle East and South-Eastern Europe.
Turkmenbashi Seaport & Revival of Silk Road
Turkmenbashi Seaport will make a special contribution to the revival of the historic Silk Road. It will become an important junction of the East-West transport corridor and a link of the international logistics infrastructure connecting Europe and Asia. Being a regional expert on Turkmenistan I believe that the modernized sea “gates” will enable Turkmenistan to enter the markets of Central Asia and the South Caucasus and will allow bringing the economic relations between Asia and Europe to a new stage and will promote a qualitative and quantitative increase in trade in this direction.
Concluding Remarks
President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is a great strategist who knows the values of blue/maritime economy due to which he has been investing heavily in this sector of economy. Turkmenistan is a “connecting hub which has been once again enhanced its status through opening of Turkmenistan’s Turkmenbashi Seaport being a bridge between East and West, North and South. Its “Air Gates”, maritime routes, speedy railways, developed roads and immense infrastructural development has capacity to transform its national as well as regional economies. It has built railway lines of national and international significance, engineering and technical facilities ensuring prosperity of the country, strengthening its economic might, and developing other areas of national economy.
Turkmenistan under President of Turkmenistan H.E. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has unique concept of regional energy cooperation, transports, transit routes, seaports and aerial cooperation. The visionary President has initiated lots of diversified but integrated national policies in the fields of energy diversification, sustainable transports system, energy security, de-carbonization and railway corridors owing to which Turkmenistan has become “connecting hub” in the region as well as in the world. The recently built Turkmenbashi Seaport will further enhance its position in the region.
Turkmenistan has now built a new shipyard into operation at the Caspian port. The project of the new international sea port in Turkmenbashi envisages the construction of ferry, passenger and container terminals. The complex will include a general loading terminal, a terminal for bulk cargo as well as shipbuilding and ship repairing plants. Turkmenistan is at the crossroad of Europe and Asia, with convenient geographical location and opening of new seaport would be a value addition for national as well as regional economies in the 21st century.
Turkmenistan has a comparative advantage in geography which connects Asia with Europe and Turkmenbashi Seaport will further enhance its status. It values modern transport systems and closely cooperates with neighbouring countries in the development of regional transport corridors through North-South and East-West Turkmenbashi Seaport will be a value addition. Globally Turkmenistan is a pioneer in so many initiatives in terms of climate change, development, human rights, empowerment of women and the last but not the least, sustainable transport system. The seaport is constructed on the Caspian coast which will create exclusively favourable conditions for the access of European countries to the commodity markets of the Middle East and the countries of the Indian Ocean. Construction of its own Navy for Turkmenistan is not only an economic task, but also has an important strategic and political importance.
The Seaport will be able to service 300,000 passengers, 75,000 trailer trucks, and 400,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers a year. The projected annual total throughput capacity of the new port is 17-18 million tons of cargo; the ship-to-shore berths (STS) will operate with a capacity of 25 TEUs per hour.
It will connect Eurasia, providing access to the sea terminals of the Black Sea and Baltic regions, South and South-East Asia, the Middle East, as well as to powerful economic centers, such as China, India, Pakistan, and countries of the Asia-Pacific region. It will boost its export revenues by handling shipping traffic between Asia and Europe. It will enhance its cargo handling capacity more than three times.
Turkmenistan already has a railway link with China through neighboring Kazakhstan and the new port could help Ashgabat win a slice of cargo flows moving between China, the Middle East and Europe. Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Iran also have Caspian ports.
Turkmenbashi Seaport also has a shipbuilding and ship-repair plant which has the capacity to process 12,000 tons of steel per year. The facility will be able to construct 4-6 vessels annually while providing maintenance facilities for another 20-30 ships per year, allowing for repair works to be carried out on civilian vessels such as tankers, dry cargo vessels and tugboats. It is a new development milestone for Turkmenistan.
Being a regional expert on Turkmenistan I hope that the port will turn Turkmenistan into a logistics hub. Being a mega ultra-modern seaport the port would help achieve active integration into the international system of economic relations. It will enhance Turkmenistan’s role as an important center for transit communications in the days to come. Financial services giant Pricewaterhouse Coopers gave Turkmenistan an award recognizing the Turkmenbashi port simply as “the best seaport”. Turkmenbashi Seaport achieved two “Guinness World Records” for being the “largest which will be used as a landing site for migratory birds.
It is hoped that shipping between Turkmenbashi and Russia’s Caspian port of Olya would be started. Kyrgyzstan has also expressed interest in utilizing the new seaport which will significantly reduce the distance and travel time for large-scale cargo flows, bringing to a qualitative new level economic and trade cooperation between Asia and Europe. It is also hoped that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) would also consider utilizing this new Turkmen seaport in the days to come.
Turkmenistan has unique transport diplomacy which connects regions, countries and of course people. Turkmenbashi Seaport has the potential to increase the prosperity not only of Turkmenistan but its landlocked eastern neighbors, from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan to Kyrgyzstan, by providing a vital maritime transport link for their products to reach Western markets. It will also facilitate China and Russia which also provide alternative maritime routes.
The Turkmenbashi Seaport is expected to improve Turkmenistan’s export revenues and establish the country as a major shipping hub that connects Europe and Asia. It intends to help the country’s economy to reduce its dependence on exporting natural gas.
