BTK railway to be commissioned in late October
By Sara Israfilbayova
The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, construction of which began in 2008, will be commissioned on October 28, said Javid Gurbanov, the head of Azerbaijan Railways.
The BTK railway is being constructed on the basis of the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey intergovernmental agreement. The main purpose of the project is to improve economic relations between the three countries and gain foreign direct investment by connecting Europe and Asia.
Earlier in July, while his visit to Kars province, Gurbanov stressed that an agreement to establish a logistics center was signed in Kars in the framework of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway project.
Gurbanov noted that entrepreneurs will annually be able to send 2 million tons of goods with preferences by the BTK railway, further adding that in the future the volume of cargo transportation along the BTK route will be increased.
He also expressed hope that in the future cargo transportation from Kazakhstan and China via the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway will increase to 500,000 containers.
The project implementation began in 2007 and construction began in 2008. The line is intended to transport one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of freight at the first stage. This capacity will then reach 3 million passengers and 17 million tons of cargo.
The first test train on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) route left Turkey for Georgia on July 20.
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