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Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway to be launched in 2014

12 October 2012 15:24 (UTC+04:00)
Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway to be launched in 2014

By Nigar Orujova

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway will be fully commissioned in 2014, while a first test train from Azerbaijan to the Turkish border is planned to be dispatched by late 2012, Azerbaijan Railways chairman Arif Asgarov has said.

The railway project aims to link directly the railway systems of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to transport large amounts of cargo and passengers. The railway is being built in accordance with an inter-governmental agreement reached by the three countries.

Azerbaijan is closely involved in the implementation of international and regional projects, including such transport projects as Baku-Tbilisi-Kars and North-South, Asgarov told the local press on the eve of October 13, the holiday of railway transport workers.

Asgarov noted that employees of Demiryolservis LLC and Azerbaijan Railways CJSC were involved in the construction of the Georgian section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway as contractors.

Azerbaijani Transport Minister Ziya Mammadov said at a Cabinet of Ministers meeting recently that the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is continuing at a rapid pace.

According to the minister, the construction of a 5.2 kilometer section running via Georgia's Akhalkalaki district on the border with Turkey has been completed.

The construction of railway buildings at the Akhalkalaki and Kartsakhi stations with a 150 meter long bridge located along about 100-kilometer stretch of the railroad, and a 4.2 km tunnel on the border of Turkey and Georgia is in progress. Construction work on upgrading the 153 km Marabda-Akhalkalaki section is underway.

Mammadov said work on building the railroad continued over the nine months of 2012 in Azerbaijan. Some 362.8 km of the railway were constructed during this period. 77.5 km of the distance is made up by main roads, while the remaining 285.3 km -- by local roads.

As many as 11 overpass bridges have been constructed over highways from January to September. Some 400 new big- and medium-sized buses were purchased and 1,085 taxi cars supplied to the country in this period, he said.

'Construction of the century'

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is gaining more and more interest and may become an even larger regional route.

Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan stated their interest in implementing the Navoi-Turkmenbashi-Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project in a joint statement issued by Presidents Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and Islam Karimov during the Uzbek leader's visit to Ashgabat.

"The parties also highlighted the importance of implementing the Navoi-Turkmenbashi-Baku-Tbilisi-Kars transport project...which will provide broad access to international markets," the Turkmen and Uzbek leaders' statement said.

Meanwhile, Javid Gurbanov, the head of AzerYolServis company of the Azerbaijani Transport Ministry, regarded the project a "construction of the century" for the countries in the region.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway will increase the flow of containers and other types of cargo from Asia to Europe. Its throughput capacity will peak at 17 million tons of cargo per year. Initially, the capacity will be 6.5 million tons of consignments and 1 million passengers.

In 2007, Azerbaijan allocated a $200 million loan to Georgia for 25 years, with an interest rate of one percent, to finance the construction and rehabilitation of the Georgian section of the railway. An agreement to allocate additional $575 million to the Georgian side was signed in July 2011. These funds were allocated for a period of 25 years, at a rate of five percent.

The Marmaris project envisaging the construction of a tunnel under the Bosporus will open a railway link to Europe.

In September, Georgia and Turkey agreed to sign a contract on the construction of a railway tunnel on the Akhalkalaki-Kars railway line of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars route, Turkish media reported.

In a recent meeting in Istanbul between Georgia Revenue Service Head Jaba Ebanoidze and Turkish Minister for Customs Ziya Altunialdiz the sides reached agreement to simplify border crossing procedures with the exemption of imports into Georgia from all customs duties.

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