IRU’s lead in Eurasia, Dmitry Cheltsov, this week chaired a session on regional transport priorities at an event held alongside the latest meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Yerevan, Armenia.
The ‘International Forum on Transit Potential of the Eurasian Continent’, was opened and attended by the Deputy Prime Ministers of each of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) countries – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. Heads of state and government of the same nations were also in attendance and participated in individual sessions.
Mr Cheltsov chaired a panel session on the role of regional integrations and international organisations in driving transport and transit.
Key to this will be digitalisation – using technology to make transport more seamless. Integrated transport systems and increased use of tools for improved digitalisation were amongst some of the key responses to the challenges currently facing the road transport industry laid out in IRU’s Manifesto, which was published last month.
The Eurasian region remains a crucial part of the world’s multimodal transport network. Situated between developed and developing economies in Europe and East & South East Asia, the region is crucial to the development of trade and transport across the world, as demand on the freight sector, in particular road transport, is set to increase significantly over the next generation.
This week’s discussion in Yerevan on the future of road transport echoes the regional – and global – trend for innovation in mobility and logistics. This is a theme that will be further discussed in relation to road safety at IRU’s Logistics and Innovation Forum in London in February and at IRU’s World Congress in Berlin, in October 2020.