Armenia and Iran will try to create a new transport corridor linking India to Europe via their two territories, said Friday the Armenian Minister of Transport and Communication Gagik Beglaryan.

He explained that Armenia had reached an agreement with the concerned officials of the Iranian government during a visit to Tehran last week. The Armenian and Iranian governments will work together to facilitate cargo shipments between Europe and India, which will be performed on the Persian Gulf, Iran, Armenia, Georgia and the Black Sea.

“We agreed to send two samples of Mumbai Indian container port to Europe via the Persian Gulf and Iran to determine the price of these shipments,” he said. “According to our rough calculations, the cost of this transit route should be lower than other routes of Iran which, as you know, would pass through Turkey and Azerbaijan.”

Beglarian met with the First Vice President of Iran Eshaq Jahangiri, Minister of Roads and Urban Development Akhoundi Abbas and Minister of Communication Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi during the trip, which took place 20 and January 21 in Tehran. According to the press service Beglarian, he discussed with Akhoundi of “creating a corridor of Black Persian gulfs.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was about to pass him a call on Jan. 24 to his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan in which he said that the two neighboring states should “spare no effort to link the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea.” The two leaders have explored this possibility, but also other closer economic ties that have emerged with the recent lifting of international sanctions against Iran.

Beglarian said that in an effort to improve the attractiveness of the Eurasian corridor, the Armenian government will intensify this year the ongoing reconstruction of major highways of Armenia, which stretch over 550 km. The government will specifically try to accelerate the improvement of roads in the southeastern Syunik province, which borders Iran.

“If we start this work at Agarak (Syunik a city) this year, they will realize that our alternative transit route is best,” explained the minister.

The government had already borrowed $ last 150 million years in the Eurasian Development Bank based in Kazakhstan (EDB) to reconstruct a 20 km road which currently goes through a mountain pass near Agarak.

For Beglarian, modernization of Agarak-Kajaran section significantly shorten the journey from the Iranian border to yeraskh, a railway station about 50 kilometers south of Yerevan. In the ambitious transport project discussed with Tehran Beglarian explained that goods from India and Iran would be transported to yeraskh by trucks, and shipped to the port of the Black Sea Poti (Georgia) by train.