The World Bank’s Middle Corridor verdict: the Caspian crossing is the bottleneck

The World Bank’s new assessment of the Trans-Caspian corridor, published on 28 September under the title “Integration: World-Class Trade Logistics Along the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor”, is mostly good news for the governments along the route. It finds that the large infrastructure projects are funded or under way, and it projects that trade along the route could more than triple by 2040. Its central warning concerns operations rather than money. The constraint it identifies is how cargo is handled, documented and scheduled, and the place where those problems concentrate is the Caspian crossing.

What the report says

The report covers nine countries with nearly 200 million people: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Türkiye, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Armenia is included because physical links are expected in the 2030s, within the report’s 2023–2040 horizon. The bank estimates that strategic investment could more than triple trade volumes, halve travel times, raise the nine countries’ combined GDP by 3.3 per cent, which The Astana Times equates to $58bn at current levels, and add 2 million jobs. With deeper trade and transport reforms, volumes could quadruple and journey times fall by two-thirds compared with 2023.

It identifies 16 priority infrastructure projects worth $25.1bn, of which rail accounts for $22.5bn, according to News.az. About 75 per cent of the projects, representing 85 per cent of the cost, are under way or about to start. The largest is a rail crossing of the Bosphorus at $8.28bn, followed by the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway at $4.7bn. On the Caspian, the list includes $500m for Baku port and $310m for Aktau. A further $30bn or so of enabling investment would go on feeder roads, inland terminals, rolling stock, cargo-handling equipment and digital systems. “At present, the Trans-Caspian Corridor lacks this level of integration,” the bank says, according to Caspian Post, and it concludes that operational efficiency rather than insufficient infrastructure is likely to become the main constraint.

The sea leg in numbers

The Caspian is where the corridor has grown fastest. World Bank senior transport economist Muneeza Alam said on 1 October that volumes on the Trans-Caspian section rose 34 per cent between 2021 and 2025, citing Middle Corridor Association data, and container volumes by 32 per cent. The report projects total trans-Caspian volumes increasing about 3.6 times, from 8.8 million tonnes in 2023 to 32.1 million tonnes in 2040. The corridor’s eastern gateway is projected to grow from 28.5 million to 105.7 million tonnes and the western gateway from 12.1 million to about 35 million tonnes.

The cargo on the water is not what the corridor’s promoters usually emphasise. Bulk goods such as grain, fertiliser, construction materials and fuel account for 92 per cent of freight crossing the Caspian, the report finds. For that cargo, capacity and cost matter more than speed. Containers are a small share, and the report calls the long-term task establishing the corridor as a competitive and reliable container route.

National figures for 2026 point in the same direction but use different definitions. Kazakhstan’s vice-minister of trade and integration, Aidar Abildabekov, said Middle Corridor cargo exceeded 3 million tonnes in January–August, up 22 per cent, against a design capacity of 6 million tonnes; slightly more than 4 million tonnes moved in 2025. Container traffic grew a further 18 per cent in the eight months. At Baku, Azerbaijan Railways reported 5.5 million tonnes handled in January–August, about 3 per cent more than a year earlier, and more than 85,000 TEU, up 22 per cent from 69,855 TEU. August alone brought 12,900 TEU, 39 per cent more than a year earlier. Kazakhstan’s corridor figure and the World Bank’s trans-Caspian total are different measures and should not be compared directly.

Where the crossing breaks down

The report’s most concrete findings concern the ports. According to JAMnews, which reviewed the document, Baku raised its container capacity from 100,000 to 150,000 TEU in 2025 by working existing infrastructure harder, and handled 107,000 TEU, about 71 per cent of that capacity. The port as a whole was at 55 per cent utilisation, but that average hides pressure at the container and ferry terminals. The bank also notes that the entrance channel and approaches have not been dredged since the port moved to Alat in 2018, and that the falling level of the Caspian “requires urgent action”: draft limits can stop ships loading fully and cut real throughput.

Time is lost mainly while cargo waits. Container freight spends the most time at ports, in part because train and vessel schedules are not coordinated. The paperwork is heavy. In one example in the report, a container moving between Asia and Europe may need 10 customs transit entry and exit procedures, five railway consignment notes and two maritime documents. The bank recommends a single digital T3 document combining transport, transit and trade data, which would require mutual recognition and agreed data-sharing.

Its boldest proposal is institutional: a single operator to integrate the container services of the Azerbaijani, Georgian, Kazakh and Turkish railways with Caspian shipping run by Azerbaijan’s ASCO and Kazakhstan’s Kazmortransflot. That would put one party in charge of the sea leg’s schedule. It would also require state companies that now compete for cargo and revenue to share both, and the report recommends more commercially oriented management of those companies.

Prices, transit times and the new terminal

Market data show a route that is in demand but not yet fast. Argus reported that the cost of moving a 40-foot high-cube container from Xi’an to Alat rose to $6,750–7,200 in September from $6,700–7,100 in August, with smaller operators charging 5–10 per cent more. Transit on the Xi’an–Altynkol–Aktau–Alat route was 14–19 days. Shippers cited higher bunker prices in the Caspian and Black seas and concerns over Middle East disruption to sea routes from China, while competition from other routes, including the Northern Sea Route, is restraining further increases. Some 3,500–3,700 empty containers sat idle in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan at the end of September, unchanged from August. Kazakhstan’s stated aim, according to Abildabekov, is to get containers to Georgian and Turkish ports in 10–12 days.

Private capital is starting to bid for the gaps. On 30 September Germany’s Rhenus Group and Aktau International Sea Trade Port signed an agreement on next steps for a trimodal container terminal of at least 30 hectares, adding at least 150,000 TEU of annual capacity; a cargo-flow analysis and feasibility assessment come next. Abildabekov said the first stage of a container hub at Aktau with a Chinese partner is complete, EBRD-backed dredging is under way and Kuryk is being upgraded. On the southern crossing, Uzbekistan’s Uztemiryolkonteyner proposed on 30 September a regular Turkmenbashi–Baku feeder service, intended to give Uzbek cargo an additional sea link towards Europe.

What it means for investors and governments

• Port capacity on the east shore is being added faster than the system can schedule it. Rhenus’s 150,000 TEU at Aktau would on its own exceed Baku’s 107,000 TEU of 2025 throughput; the value of new terminals depends on synchronised ferry and rail slots.
• Dredging at Alat is a precondition, not an option. A port that cannot load ships fully because of draft limits will not use its nominal capacity, whatever the terminal investment.
• The single-operator and single-document proposals require Baku and Astana to cede some control over their state carriers. That is a political decision, and the report gives governments the evidence for it.
• Bulk will keep dominating the crossing. Lenders should size Caspian shipping investments for grain, fertiliser and fuel as well as containers.

The World Bank stresses that the report does not assess projects as ready for financing. Its practical message is narrower and more useful: the corridor’s money is largely committed, and the next gains will come from a Caspian crossing that runs to a timetable. The littoral governments will show whether they accept that message by what they do with ASCO, Kazmortransflot and the dredgers, rather than by the size of the next investment pledge.

Sources

• The Astana Times — Middle Corridor Investments Could Triple Trade, Add 2 Million Jobs by 2040, Report Finds
• JAMnews — What Azerbaijan needs to do to benefit from Middle Corridor: World Bank recommendations
• News.az — World Bank: Azerbaijan’s role in $3.2B Middle Corridor projects
• Caspian Post — World Bank Puts Middle Corridor Infrastructure Needs at $25.1B
• Trend — Key growth dynamics along Middle Corridor focuses on Trans-Caspian section - World Bank
• Report.az — Cargo traffic via Middle Corridor exceeds 3 million tons in 8 months
• Report.az — Baku port handles over 5.5 million tons of cargo in eight months
• Trend — Argus highlights increase in Caspian container shipping costs
• The Astana Times — Global Logistics Company Rhenus Advances Plans for Multimodal Terminal in Aktau
• Trend — Uzbekistan's UTK pitches Turkmenbashi-Baku feeder service at TCTC forum