Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 27
By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:
The delay in the implementation of the Baku -Tbilisi- Kars railway project is legal in nature and connected to the problems faced by the company engaged in its construction, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a joint press conference with his Azerbaijani counterpart in Baku Nov. 27.
"Tbilisi will host a meeting of foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia in December," he said. "The foreign ministers will visit the construction site and review the situation."
Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is being constructed on the basis of a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement.
Azerbaijan allocated a loan of $775 million for the construction of the railway's Georgian section.
The State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) finances the project in accordance with the Azerbaijani president's decree 'On the implementation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project activities', dated February 21, 2007.
A new 105-kilometer branch of the railroad is being constructed as part of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project. In addition, the railway's Akhalkalaki-Marabda-Tbilisi section is under reconstruction in Georgia that will increase its capacity to 15 million metric tons of cargo per year. A depot is under construction in Akhalkalaki for the transition of trains from the existing tracks in Georgia to the European ones.
The peak capacity of the corridor will be 17 million metric tons of cargo per year. At the initial stage, this figure will be equal to one million passengers and 6.5 million metric tons of cargo.