Latvian company to supply equipment for Uzbek railway
By Nazrin Gadimova
The Latvian Belam Riga Company signed a contract with Uzbekistan Railways state joint stock company on the transportation of equipment for the electrification of the Marokand-Karshi railway.
The news was announced by Trend news agency that quoted the Uzbek company as saying on February 7.
Belam Riga won the tender announced by the Uzbekistan Railways on the transportation of equipment on three lots in April, 2013, which included transformer substations, contact network, signaling system, centralization and blocking (CNTIC), telecommunication system, and SCADA.
The representative of the Uzbekistan Railways has not mentioned the cost of the contract because of the privacy conditions accepted while signing the contract. However, some experts believe that the costs will not be less than $40 million.
Uzbekistan Railways started the electrification of the Marokand - Karshi section, with a length 140.8 kilometers, in January 2012. The $234.7 million project also envisages the reconstruction of the locomotive depot in Karshi city (the administrative center of the Kashkadarya region) for the new Tashguzar - Bojsun - Kumkurgan railway. The project will be completed by 2017.
The project is being financed with a $100 million loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in, as well as the funds of the Uzbek government in the form of customs and tax benefits totaling $23.8 million and the equity of Uzbekistan Railways in the amount of $110.9 million.
The total length of Uzbekistan's railway is 4,200 kilometers, some 1,000 kilometers of which have been electrified. In total, about 2,000 kilometers of the railways in the country will be electrified.
Around 60 percent of cargo turnover and 80 percent of the total volume of cargo export and import in Uzbekistan fall on its railways.