e-CMR and intermodal digital TIR top the agenda at meetings in Islamabad, underlining support for digitalisation across the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) region – connecting Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey with Eurasian countries.
The meeting involved the ECO Transit Transport Coordination Council and its two committees, the Road Committee and the Customs Transit Committee. IRU presented the latest TIR developments in the ECO region and highlighted digitalisation of the customs transit system as well as paperless CMR.
Encouraging all Member States to work with IRU on TIR digitalisation, IRU emphasised the recent successful intermodal transport operation under TIR between Iran and Slovenia, and underlined the benefits of wider implementation of the system in the ECO countries.
TIR intermodal transport and the importance of accession to other UN road transport facilitation instruments were also in the spotlight.
The event follows Iran and Turkey’s successful digital TIR project with IRU and UNECE in 2016-2017. Both countries also acceded to the e-CMR protocol in November 2017 and January 2018 respectively, signifying a strong digital tide to sweep across the region.
Pakistan will shortly join the e-CMR network and Afghanistan is likely to ratify the protocol to the CMR Convention. Azerbaijan and Tajikistan are implementing TIR-EPD and moving towards digital TIR. Iran expressed its readiness to launch digital TIR operations with ECO neighbours and to share its experience on using digital TIR.