The figures came at the forum's opening on Monday and reached the Russian-language wires on Tuesday. Mariam Kvrivishvili, minister of economy, put the 8-month count at 13.7 million tonnes, 24% above the same period of 2025 and “the best result of the last ten years”. Rail freight turnover rose 11% and air cargo 30%. She named no port. The count covers everything the terminals handle; the corridor's own tonnage was not given.
The tripling is the Bank's scenario, and the investment is its condition; Tbilisi is stating its share of the condition and pricing it.
Irakli Kobakhidze spoke in the same hall the same day. Three quarters of the East-West highway is built, he said, and more than 1 billion lari goes this year into railway infrastructure and rolling stock. The ten-year strategy reads as a set of multipliers: “doubling the capacity of our railways and halving cargo transit time, doubling the capacity of our ports and tripling the capacity of our international airports.” The money line: “By 2032 we plan to attract about 7 billion US dollars for the development of key transport and logistics infrastructure.”
He borrowed the ceiling from the World Bank: “According to the World Bank, with the right investment and greater efficiency, freight volumes through the Middle Corridor could triple by 2030,” with transit time cut in half. Read the conditional. The tripling is the Bank's scenario, and the investment is its condition; Tbilisi is stating its share of the condition and pricing it. The verb is attract. The $7 billion is to be raised, and the speech names no lender.
A route moves what its narrowest link admits. Georgia's doubling addresses the links Georgia owns: its railway, its ports, its highway. The links it does not own are the Azerbaijani railway to the border, Baku's port, the Caspian crossing with the ferries that serve it, and the Kazakh quays. On the last two the record the desk assembled on 1 September says this. Kazhydromet's 2025 report puts the Caspian at −29.35 metres Baltic datum, −29.23 on the north-eastern shore and −29.47 in the east, with scenarios of −29.8 to −30.0 by 2030 and −32.4 to −34.0 by 2050; the shoreline has retreated 30 to 35 kilometres since 2006. A preprint on Aktau's port posted on EarthArXiv on 19 December 2025 reports about 70% of the fenders damaged and vessels loading to about 80%. Aktau's dredging has been contracted to China Harbour Engineering for a target draft of 6 to 7 metres and a throughput rise from 6 to 10 million tonnes by 2028, the price undisclosed on the procurement portal. The route association's plans for 2026 carry no draft line and no dredging line.
Set the two shores side by side. On the Black Sea the ministry has just counted a ten-year record and the government promises to double the quays. On the Caspian, ships load to four fifths and the one dated commitment is a channel of 6 to 7 metres two years out. Until Aktau dredges and Kuryk publishes a draft, the Bank's tripling stays a conditional and Georgia's doubling stays a promise to be ready when the condition is met.
The corridor collects memoranda faster than metres of draft. On Tuesday in Belgrade, Uzbekistan and Serbia exchanged a memorandum “in support of the Middle Corridor”, one of 20 documents at a state visit; Batumi's forum leaves a strategy and a fundraising target. The numbers that will decide the route are elsewhere: Georgian Railway's own capacity figures, which the speech did not give; Anaklia's construction schedule; the drafts at Kuryk and Aktau; and the route association's 8-month tonnage, when it publishes one.