Romantic old Baku hill push inside Caspian Sea, like Posillipo in Naples. Destination of Russian middle-class honey moons during SSSR, it’s now a vibrant futuristic city with its harmonic skyscrapers and animated coffee and restaurants along the promenade to the Sea. I met the father of present President during a visit of 25 years ago. Ex chief of KGB during SSSR, he was returning to its country as a king in an Asiatic tribe, trying to make the nation survive notwithstanding a war with Armenia and a loss of competencies in all the system after Russian living. When he was exiting from Presidential palace, all the city was stopping. Azerbaijan is a beautiful country, supposed to be the terrestrial Paradise described in the Bible, with a vast rich land full of fruit trees and rivers full of fishes, surrounded by mountains, coasting a Sea with pearl colours of our Adriatic, in a basin of desertic rocky landscape. But now the country is in a full development, with economic data tripled for Azeris population stable of 10 millions people, with a GDP per capita reaching 8000$ and playing an important role in international politics also, between the Turkey, whose language is understood having similar roots, Iran , having inside a large minority of Azeris, and Russian Federation, main commercial partner in oil and gas.And. recently they won a short war with Armenia, reoccupying the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
In addition to the growing factors until now pursued, the future investments plan will further push th economic dynamics. It’s a logistic plan, to create in the country a hub of transport and commercial infrastructure to better connect Europe and Asia. Azerbaijan will become a crosspoint between the Trans Caspian International Transport Route (TITR)from Central Asia and China, leveraging on Baku (Alat) harbour. Already during Ukrainian war the growth of the goods transported along this route has been important, but of course new investment on railway and ferry crossing Caspian Sea, followed by new structures in the terminals ports, will permit a more rapid dynamic of this so called Middle Corridor, one of the Silk Roads projects with China.
From North to South, crossing the previous route, the INSTC project will be also realised, International North-South Transport Corridor between Russian Federation and Iran, to be prolonged until India in multimodal structure. This is vital for Iran connection with Europe and India and Azerbaijan will also benefit from the high level of commercial activity developed by the new infrastructure. Financing has been decided in Russia in 2023 and about 160 km of new railway with 1.6 billion $ investment should be finished in next three years.
Those projects which partly leverage on existing infrastructures will be a great economic jump for Azerbaijan, at the moment a big hub for gas toward Europe trough Turkey to Italy. The tradition of good administration and nice relationship with Western countries and Brics area, will be premiated for the country well being and international relevance. As history demonstrated, the infrastructural network is a necessary premise to improve also the geopolitical position, today positive for energy market but tomorrow consolidated by these investments initiatives. Azerbaijan is already an key asset in Turkey Ottoman restoration,moving to Central Asia until China, but tomorrow through Russian and Iranian interests the country can develop a more independent and successful policy of a middle power in a critical area interfacing Europe and Asia markets.
