PARIS (Trend) — The railways of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran have agreed to establish a single tariff for the new Uzen-Bolashak-Serhetyaka-Akyayla-Incheburun international railway line, the press service of Kazakhstan Temir Zholy reported. The preferential tariff conditions will help Kazakhstan’s export to develop new markets in India and the Gulf countries, said the message.

Tehran has held a tripartite meeting of chairmen of Kazakhstan Temir Zholy NC JSC, the Ministry of Railway Transport of Turkmenistan and the Railways of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The parties have reached an agreement on establishing a single tariff across Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran for container trains running from China to Iran starting from October 15, 2015. This measure will help to attract maritime freight traffic and increase attractiveness of land transcontinental corridors.

The sides have also agreed preferential tariff conditions in the territories of the parties for transportation of grain, ferrous metals, aluminium and ferroalloys from Kazakhstan to Iran and further to the port of Bandar Abbas.

The next trilateral meeting of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran heads of railways will take place in December 2015 in Ashgabat.

In the meantime, tariffs for services of the largest operator in the field of rail freight transportation in Kazakhstan will be calculated under the new methodology. “The company will be able to form more competitive tariff conditions for customers using the tools of logistics and improvement of quality indicators of transportation, namely the optimization of empty runs, reduction of non-productive downtime of wagons and so forth,” said the president of Kaztemirtrans, Kairat Saurbaev. Automatization of the process will reduce the time of calculation and provision of information on tariffs to customers from two-four days to two-five hours depending on the route of transportation. Tariff calculation will be carried out automatically in all company branches.