The New Eurasian Land Transport Initiative (NELTI) is part of the effort made by the IRU to revitalise the Silk Road. It consists in identifying three commercially viable routes: Northern (through the Russian Federation), Central (through the Caucasus and Central Asia) and Southern (through Turkey and Iran) routes. It aims at contributing to the implementation of the UN Millennium Development Goals as well as of the Almaty Programme of Action for landlocked developing countries, with a view to developing Eurasian land transport links. The objective of the IRU NELTI Project is to instigate regular road freight shipments between Europe and China and to assist in achieving the transit potential of, particularly, nations in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The Project likewise aims to increase the volumes of road transport operations and services that these countries can offer, while raising political and business awareness of the feasibility of and demand for such transcontinental road transport operations.
Keywords: road haulage, border waiting times, security, TIR, bilateral permits, trade