Azerbaijan, Baku, May 2 / Trend, A.Akhundov /
Information about a rise in the project cost of the opening of railway communication on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars route is false, Azerbaijani Deputy Transport Minister Musa Panahov told journalists on Thursday.
He said work on the project will continue so that the railway reached the Georgian border with Turkey in 2013. As Panahov said, in 2014 the railway will be commissioned.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is being built on the basis of a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish inter-state agreement. Azerbaijan provided a loan worth $775 million for construction of the Georgian section. Funding for this project from the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan is carried out in accordance with a presidential decree on the 'Implementation of measures within Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project' dated Feb.21, 2007.
It is planned to construct a new 105 kilometre branch railway as part of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project. In addition, the section of the Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Marabda railway will be reconstructed in Georgia which will increase its capacity to 15 million tons of cargo per year. It is planned to build a centre in Akhalkalaki for the transition of trains from the existing train tracks in Georgia to the European one.
Peak capacity of the corridor will be 17 million tons of cargo. This figure will be at the level of one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo in the initial stages.
In future, with completion of the Marmara project (construction of a tunnel under the Bosporus), access to Europe will be provided using the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway.
