BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 5. While the world
continues to argue over the redistribution of trade routes, two
neighboring states in the South Caucasus are doing what others only
talk about: turning their geographic position into real money and
real influence. Azerbaijan and Georgia are not just partners in the
Middle Corridor - they have already become the backbone of this
crucial transport route.


The numbers speak for themselves - and loudly. In 2025,
container traffic through Azerbaijan grew by 19%, reaching 135,000
TEU. Transit increased by 20% to 66,300 TEU. More than 390
container block trains traveled along the China–Europe route via
the Middle Corridor. This is not just growth - it is acceleration.
At the Georgian end of the chain, the picture is just as telling:
by the end of 2025, transit accounted for nearly 58% of the
country’s total rail freight turnover. Azerbaijan confidently took
first place among sources of railway imports into Georgia - 32% in
the third quarter. For comparison, at the beginning of the same
year, this share was half as much. The partnership, as we can see,
is not just working - it is gaining speed.


Behind these figures lies concrete work that has largely gone
unnoticed in the broader agenda but has tangible consequences for
any shipper. In October 2025, in Almaty, the railway
administrations of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia signed a
plan for the digitalization of freight transport. The result was
striking: the time required to process documents for transit cargo
passing through Georgia dropped from eight to nine hours to just
forty minutes - nearly an order of magnitude faster. In logistics,
time is literally money, and this step has made the corridor
significantly cheaper for all its users. This is not just a
technical improvement - it is a signal to the market: the corridor
is operating in earnest.


Looking at the timeline of recent months, one thing stands out:
Baku and Tbilisi are practically living in negotiation rooms. In
February 2026, the Director of the Georgian Maritime Transport
Agency, Ivane Abashidze, met with Azerbaijan’s Consul General Fuad
Azizov - discussing maritime transport, regional connectivity, and
the strategic role of the Middle Corridor. During the same weeks,
Georgia officially joined the international association “Eurasian
Transport Route,” a structure Azerbaijan had been building together
with Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan since 2024. The
association’s goal is unified tariffs, unified transport
technologies, and unified logistics products. Georgia has entered
this architecture as a full-fledged participant. On February 26, at
a Georgia–Azerbaijan–Türkiye business forum, Azerbaijan’s Minister
of Economy Mikayil Jabbarov spoke no longer about intentions, but
about concrete mechanisms for deepening integration.


It would be naive to discuss all this in a vacuum - transit has
long become part of larger geopolitics. After 2022, global shippers
began urgently searching for routes bypassing traditional ones. The
Northern Corridor through Russia became toxic for Western
businesses. The Southern route through Iran remains closed to most
Western companies due to sanctions, and given the developments
around the Islamic Republic in recent weeks, the future of any
logistics via Iran is drifting into the realm of theoretical
discussions. Against this backdrop, the Middle Corridor has emerged
not just as an alternative, but as the only viable alternative.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev stated this directly in his
speech at the 13th Global Baku Forum in March this year: “What we
are doing now is just investing additional funds in order to expand
the capacity of existing corridors, because the demand to go
through Azerbaijan is growing. And we provide critical transit for
many countries to the east and to the west of Azerbaijan."


Behind these words are concrete figures: over the past three
years, cargo volumes passing through the country have increased by
nearly 90%. Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Türkiye recognize
this moment - which is why, back in 2022, they agreed on a joint
roadmap for the development of the route through 2027, and meetings
of transport authorities have become almost more frequent than
summits of heads of state.


The horizon is already clearly defined on both sides. Georgian
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze put it plainly: by 2030, the
country will complete construction of all segments of the Middle
Corridor on its territory - highways, railways, and port
infrastructure. “We are a small country, but we have a very
strategic location, and we are making use of it,” he said. Ilham
Aliyev looks at the same timeline with the same confidence:
according to him, by 2030 the capacity of the Middle Corridor will
triple compared to 2021, while transit time will be cut in half.
Two leaders are speaking about the same project - and in
unison.


Competition for transit flows will only intensify. In this
situation, Azerbaijan and Georgia have one key advantage -
predictability. The route works, documents are processed in forty
minutes, trains run on schedule, and agreements are honored. In a
world where logistics increasingly resembles a geopolitical
chessboard, that is worth a great deal - in the most literal
sense.