Azerbaijan, Baku, 6 March / corr Trend S.Aliyev / The construction of the 26km Georgian section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway route will commence at the end of April or beginning of May, Ramaz Giorgadze, the Director General of Marabda-Kartzakhi company, said on 6 March. "Now the weather conditions do not allow us to set up the construction (too much snow)," Giorgadze said.
The Azerbaijan Construction Service acts as contractor of the project. The company has allocated $24mln. The total budget of the contracts concluded with Azerbaijan Construction Service is $79mln. Construction is expected to be complete by 1 October 2009, he said.
Azerbaijan finances the construction and project in Georgia, in the amount of $200mln.
The Akhalkalaki-Marabda railway of the third category with the 1,520mm junction will enable to improve the carrying capacity to 15mln tons of cargo per year on both directions. The project also envisages energy supply to this section, establishment of appropriate communications systems, including the construction of fibre-optic cable and its connection to the general fibre-optic system of the Georgina railways, as well as projection of the relevant infrastructure needed for providing passenger and cargo deliveries.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars project includes the construction of a 105 km railway road, with 76 km section running via Turkey and 29 km section via Georgia. Moreover, the 183 km section of the Akhalkalaki-Marabda-Tbilisi railway will also be reconstructed to improve the carrying capacity to 15mln tons of cargo per year. There are plans to build in Akhalkalaki a place for the transition of trains from the track existing in Georgia to the European track. The project is estimated at $422mln and taking into consideration the accompanying infrastructure, its cost will total $600mln.
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