On 27 and 28 October 2022, the 15th Verona Eurasian Economic Forum took place at the Baku Congress Centre in Azerbaija
On 27 and 28 October 2022, the 15th Verona Eurasian Economic Forum took place at the Baku Congress Centre in Azerbaijan, seeking to promote the business dialogue in Greater Eurasia. The main topic of this year’s forum is “Eurasia on the path to a new geopolitical and socioeconomic order: transition to a new human-oriented economy.” On 27 October, Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk spoke at the forum opening.
Excerpts from the transcript:
Alexei Overchuk: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to thank our Azerbaijani friends for hospitality and providing a platform for this forum. I also want to thank Mr Antonio Fallico (President of the Conoscere Eurasia Association) for his enthusiasm and optimism, without which this forum would be very hard to imagine.
It would be logical to expect that the Verona Eurasian Forum would take place in Verona, Italy, as it actually was until recently. However, the policy of cancelling Russia and the EU support of the governments infringing on the rights of Russian-speaking people, prohibiting them to learn and use their mother tongue, forced the forum to leave Verona. We really hope that someday, Europeans will be able to overcome their prejudices against Russia and Russians and understand the true reasons of this ongoing tragedy.
Right now, there are hardly any other platforms left for contacts between Russia and the West, which makes this meeting particularly valuable.
Russia and European countries have no direct air connections; the airspace is closed by both sides, maritime connections are diminishing, automobile carriers leave their freight at the border where it has to be reloaded or reattached. Railway operations no longer cover a number of destinations.
As concerns energy and pipeline transit, only a small number of pipelines connecting Russia to Europe are operating. The others are either blocked or under sanctions or destroyed. And this is Europe in the 21st century.
In my opinion, it would be interesting to use this rare occasion to exchange opinions on where these events may lead Eurasia. Perhaps we could even consider the consequences of this severance of ties between Russia and Europe. Especially because only recently it seemed that the idea of Europe stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok could become reality.
As concerns Russia, we are taking this crisis much better than those who designed the sanctions against our country envisioned. The expected GDP decline will amount to 2.9 percent in 2022, as opposed to the 18 percent that was predicted in early March. Inflation will be around 12.4 percent. Unemployment is at its historic low of 3.8 percent.
We are a country with our own material resources, we have no shortage of cheap energy, we provide food security – our own and that of our neighbours; we have talented people. All this allows us to build our own future.
The Verona Eurasian Forum in Baku is a signal of the transition from the "East-West" global axial model of development to the "North-South" model, and in this respect, Russia is ceasing to be the east of Europe and is beginning to see itself as the north of Eurasia, and in this vein a new logic in our development is manifesting itself.
Our investments are aimed at ensuring transport links between our economy and the south of the continent. This is especially noticeable here, in the Caspian Sea region, so it is no coincidence that Baku was chosen as the forum’s venue.
In and around the Caspian Sea, the North-South Caspian International Transport Corridor consisting of three main routes is being built. The first route runs along the western shore of the Caspian Sea through Dagestan, Azerbaijan and Iran with access to Persian Gulf ports, and the markets of India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf countries and Africa. These are our main export markets. The second route is maritime and provides interconnections between the ports of the Caspian Sea states.
The third route runs along the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea from Russia through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan with access to Iran. This route has already been tested, this year a train passed through and delivered cargo to India. The first and third routes include both rail and road transport.
The advantage of the Caspian International Transport Corridor is that it gives us access to Iranian seaports and provides connectivity to markets in the south.
We are upgrading and increasing our transport capacities to meet the expected growth in traffic volumes.
Yesterday I came to Baku from Makhachkala; we drove here by car and saw the road construction from Makhachkala to the border – it is in progress. We saw what we have with checkpoints and identified bottlenecks. Now we are upgrading the route, and we will continue to expand the capacity of the border crossing points.
We are working on dredging and rebuilding the Volga-Caspian Sea shipping channel, as well as our ports on the Caspian Sea. We will use direct investment in developing transport and logistics terminals in Iran. We plan to invest in the construction of a missing 160-kilometre section of railway connecting Iran and Azerbaijan: Rasht–Astara. Thus, we will provide a direct railway connection from the Persian Gulf to the Baltic Sea.
To support the growing volume of maritime traffic, mainly bulk cargo, grain and fertiliser, we are negotiating with our partners on building more ships of various types. We are also developing cruise ships. We are using the shipbuilding capacities of Russia, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan for this.
This is only a part of our activity. We have similar activity in the East of Russia with access to China.
As far as pipelines are concerned, this year we have dramatically increased gas exports to China. The Power of Siberia gas pipeline is in operation, and we are starting to build the Power of Siberia-2 through Mongolia. This is a very serious investment and a very serious reorientation of material infrastructure. This is not the only place where gas projects are being discussed; there are other areas that involve the markets of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries, many of which are densely populated and fast-growing economies.
At the same time, everybody knows that we are not trying to promote temporary, opportunistic benefits; we traditionally develop relations that allow both sellers and buyers to be confident of stability, to confidently encourage development.
These are all serious investment projects with long-term systemic effects. They are already being implemented. Judging by the forum programme, you will have an excellent opportunity to discuss them, to immerse yourselves in this subject matter.
I wish all forum participants a productive exchange of opinions and constructive work.
