Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway launch due in 2015 - Georgian deputy PM
TBILISI. May 7 (Interfax) - The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line is due to be launched at the end of 2015, Georgia Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Georgi Kvirikashvili told the press Tuesday.
"There are sections where over 80% of the work has been completed. The railway will be finished by the end of 2015," he said after a meeting in Tbilisi with his Turkish colleague Lutfi Elvan, held as part of the Georgian, Turkish and Azerbaijan trilateral summit.
Test trains will run well ahead of that, he said. "At the end of this year on certain sections and in the first half of 2015 throughout the main sections," the deputy prime minister said.
Currently in its initial stage is the construction of the Akhalkalaki station junction, on the border with Turkey, where trains will be transferred from Georgian to European tracks.
Kvirikashvili also said Turkey wants to participate in construction of a tunnel at the Mleta-Kobi section, near Georgia's border with Russia.
Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement on February 7 2007 to establish a rail link using the existing Tbilisi-Baku railway. The project includes construction of a 98-kilometer Kars-Akhalkalaki railway, of which 68 kilometers will run through Turkey and 30 kilometers through Georgia. Reconstruction of the 183-kilometer Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi section was also envisaged.
Construction of the Georgian sector was funded by Azerbaijan, which allocated two easy loans to Georgia totaling $775 million.
The first train was at first to run on the new railway at the end of 2012, but this was later postponed to early 2013 and then the first quarter of 2014.
Initially, freight transport on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway will be around 5 million tonnes per year, but later this will increase to 15 million to 17 million tonnes per year.
