TEHRAN, Iran, Nov.18
Trend:
Iran is assigning its government-owned lands to complete Rasht- Astara railway and started to purchase privately owned lands to complete the project on time, said the Minister of Road and Urban Development.
The Rasht- Astara railway project has been started and we have acted to purchase lands from people to complete the project under the scheduled framework," said Mohammad Eslami, Trend reports citing IRNA.
"The project is very important to us and our railway network could connect to Russia via Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani government is also very interested in the project therefore we try to operate the project based on its schedule," he said.
"Rasht- Anzali railway project is scheduled to finish in a 48 month period and so far 10 months have been passed and we have used all the capacities to finish the project on its planned framework. We have assigned government-owned lands to the project and currently purchasing lands from people and we hope the project would operate based on the plan," he added.
"We are pursuing to use the capacities of membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) railway. The agreement with CIS railway union would create the possibility of developing transportation and trade with regional and international countries" he noted.
Iran is developing a Qazvin-Rasht-Anzali-Astara railroad project that will link Rasht to Caspian port. Once the project is complete, the Caspian port will become the largest hub in northern Iran and make a major contribution to national and local economic development.
The route will connect Iran with Russia’s Baltic ports and give Russia rail connectivity to both the Persian Gulf and the Indian rail network. All the mentioned projects are meant to contribute to achieving the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC)’s envisaged plans.