IRU’s Secretary General held a series of high-level talks with transport ministers in Geneva this week on the urgent need to improve international transport and border operations.
In Geneva this week, IRU Secretary General Umberto de Pretto met with transport ministers from Iran, Iraq and Tajikistan on the sidelines of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s (UNECE)’s Inland Transport Committee meetings.
The talks followed his participation in a small closed-door ministerial workshop earlier in the week at the World Economic Forum. In a wide-ranging discussion on sustainable transport policy priorities, Umberto de Pretto outlined the crucial role of streamlining trade and border processes.
Türkiye’s Minister of Transport, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, echoed IRU’s message at the workshop, stressing the urgent need to resolve border bottlenecks that leave truck drivers stranded for days.
The three ministerial meetings, held at IRU headquarters, focused on boosting cross-border cooperation, improving logistics efficiency, and speeding up the digitalisation of transport and customs, with a key focus on the TIR system to streamline trade.
Iran’s Minister of Road and Urban Development, H.E. Farzaneh Sadegh Malvajerd, highlighted the country’s rapid progress in expanding its transit corridors, confident that volumes would reach a record 20 million tons by 21 March 2025.
She noted that continued collaboration with IRU is crucial to sustaining this growth and emphasised Iran’s commitment to digitalising transport operations.
