The silk road is one of the most famous trade routes in history, and the globalisation of supply chains looks set to play a part in its re-birth.

Earlier this week China, and seven of its near neighbours, agreed, in principle, to build a modern-day equivalent to cope with the increasing demands placed on suppliers in Central Asia.

And if it’s successful then we can expect to see a marked increase on the current one percent of trade that currently travels along the route between Europe and Asia – a minute proporation of the £500bn (€721bn) worth of trade between the two continents.

The plans are expected to be rubber-stamped at a ministerial meeting in Tajikistan in November and, if they are approved, key figures in the region hope that it will enable the historic silk road to become a viable trade route once again.

“This is a region that is at the geographic centre but has been totally overlooked as a viable overland route by some of the new powerhouses of world trade,” Xianbin Yao, the deputy director-general of the ADB’s central and west Asia department, told reporters.

The plans sound ambitious in the extreme, with the hope that the £9.6bn investment will open up six corridors (combining road and rail services) from China to Europe and from Russia to Southern Asia and the Middle East.

Grand as these plans seem, no-one should be getting too excited just yet. The investment in road and rail infrastructure in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, isn’t expected to be completed until 2018.

And whether it’s completed at all must be up for debate. After all, the last project seen on this scale floundered after EU member states dithered for years over the best way of allocating £13.6bn (€20bn) for 30 trans-European networks.