Astana continues to be hopeful of building closer trade and transit ties with New Delhi through Iran’s Bandar Abbas port and even extending connectivity to the strategic Chabahar port once a new railway link is built

Despite the hiccup, Astana continues to be hopeful of building closer trade and transit ties with New Delhi through Iran’s Bandar Abbas port and even extending connectivity to the strategic Chabahar port once a new railway link is built.

Kazakhstan’s efforts to forge greater connectivity with India via an eastern expansion of the North-South corridor running through Iran have hit a speed bump because of US sanctions, a senior Kazakh official has said.

Despite the hiccup, Astana continues to be hopeful of building closer trade and transit ties with New Delhi through Iran’s Bandar Abbas port and even extending connectivity to the strategic Chabahar port once a new railway link is built.

Kazakhstan is focusing on India to attract investments and to access the country’s market of more than one billion people, the chairman of state-run Kazakh Invest, Saparbek Tuyakbayev, said on the margins of the Astana Economic Forum. However, the transport of some goods via the Iran-Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan railway link to Bandar Abbas has been hit by sanctions imposed by the US, he acknowledged without giving details.

Bilateral trade was worth almost $1 billion in 2017. Kazakhstan is the largest supplier of uranium to India and both sides have strong defence and strategic ties. India has been keen on the eastern expansion of the International North-South Trade Corridor (INSTC), and there are plans to connect Gujarat’s Mundra port to Bandar Abbas and then link it to the Iran-Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan railway link to cut the time for transporting goods from Central Asia and to access markets in the landlocked region.