Financial Tribune- India’s fifth consignment of wheat to be sent to Afghanistan has arrived at Iran’s southeastern Shahid Beheshti Port in Chabahar.

The Ministry of Roads and Urban Development’s news portal also reported on Wednesday that about 3,000 containers have arrived in Chabahar and 2,400 have been sent to Afghanistan up until now.

This is the fifth of six Indian wheat shipments (130,000 tons in total) to Afghanistan through Chabahar.

Trilateral Agreement on Establishment of International Transport and Transit Corridor was signed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani in Tehran in May 2016.

Rouhani inaugurated the first phase of Chabahar’s Shahid Beheshti Port in December last year.

Chabahar consists of two separate ports: Shahid Kalantari and Shahid Beheshti. The opening of the first phase of Shahid Beheshti Port (out of five phases defined for the project), which has tripled its capacity to 8.5 million tons (equal to that of all the northern ports of the country), will allow the docking of super-large container ships (between 100,000 DWT and 120,000 DWT).

An agreement was signed during Rouhani’s visit to India earlier this week for Iran to lease a part of the area of Shahid Beheshti Port to India for 18 months. India Ports Global Limited will be taking over the operations of port facilities.

Chabahar, Iran’s sole oceanic port along the southeastern coasts of the country, serves as a transit route linking India, Iran and Afghanistan bypassing Pakistan.

India has committed $85 million for the development of Shahid Beheshti Port.