Turkey will operate Turkey-Iran, Pakistan container service on August 2, 2010. A decision in this regard was taken at the ECO Conference held in Tehran last week. It is pertinent to mention here that Pakistan had operated this service from its end for Iran and Turkey on August 14, 2009 when it was inaugurated by Prime Minister, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani.
The train consisting of 30 containers loaded with different commodities for Iran and Turkey had taken 13 days to reach Istanbul. After its successful run it has been decided that now the service will take eleven days to reach Islamabad dry port after its departure from Istanbul.
The train will pass from Tehran and reach Zahidan where the containers will be shifted to Pakistani wagons, which run on gauges wider than Iran and Turkey's railway gauges.
It has been considered to reduce the container charges from 2000 to 1200 Euros to facilitate the traders of these countries and make the service more successful. This matter was also discussed in the Presidential meeting held recently in Istanbul and an understanding was reached to go ahead with this proposal.
Earlier, before the operation of this service, the containers used to be shipped by sea and it had been taken 35 to 45 days to reach Istanbul from Karachi.