BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 12. The construction of the Isfahan-Shiraz Freeway, which is 370 km long, has reached 250 trillion rials (about $5.95 billion) so far, Trend reports.
The Cooperative Foundation of the Iranian Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics and the government have each paid half of this amount.
Back in 2010, with the beginning of the construction, the original estimate was 7.5 trillion rials ($179 million), and the figure has changed several times since then. The figure was also affected by devaluation of the rial.
A part of this freeway, which is 212 km from Shiraz to Izadkhast, was opened on October 12, 2023 and the work on the remaining part has kicked off.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Roads and Urban Development Minister Mehrdad Bazrpash and other officials attended the event that marked the opening of this part of the freeway.
The freeway will reduce the distance between Shiraz in the south of Iran and Isfahan in the center of Iran by 134 km. It will also save 130 million liters of fuel worth 60 trillion rials (about $1.43 billion) every year when it is fully functional.
One of the land routes in the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) is the Shiraz-Isfahan freeway, which is under the supervision of Iran’s Ministry of Roads and Urban Development.
Since August 2021, the new government of Iran has sped up the construction of this freeway.
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