The Union Cabinet has given its approval for India to accede to the Ashgabat Agreement, an international transport and transit corridor facilitating transportation of goods between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.

The Ashgabat Agreement has Oman, Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as founding members. Kazakhstan has also joined this arrangement subsequently. Accession to the Agreement would enable India to utilise this existing transport and transit corridor to facilitate trade and commercial interaction with the Eurasian region. Further, this would synchronise with our efforts to implement the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) for enhanced connectivity. India would become party to the Agreement upon consent of the founding members.

The Persian Gulf is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. An extension of the Indian Ocean (Gulf of Oman) through the Strait of Hormuz, it lies between Iran to the northeast and the Arabian Peninsula to the southwest. The Persian Gulf is mostly shallow and has many islands, of which Bahrain is the largest. The gulf is bordered by Oman and the United Arab Emirates to the south, to the west by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to the north by Kuwait and Iraq, and along the entire east coast by Iran. A gulf is a large bay that is an arm of an ocean or sea. A bay is a body of water connected to an ocean or lake, formed by an indentation of the shoreline.