Azerbaijan, Baku, March 10 / Trend I.Khalilova /
The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) started to assess the effectiveness of the project that already completed in Azerbaijan - the construction of 67-kilometer Khanarkh canal, to which the Bank has provided funding worth $9.4 million, IDB representative in Azerbaijan Tamerlan Tagiyev said.
"Based on the bank's practice, 3-4 years after completion of the project the bank evaluates it for compliance with its stated objectives," he said. "Regarding this, the bank sent a mission to Azerbaijan, which will stay here until March 17 to carry out this work on the project of construction of the Khanarkh channel.
Construction of the canal designed to improve the irrigation system on the area of 62,000 hectares in the four northern regions of the country (Khachmaz, Guba, Gusar and Davachi), was launched in 2002 and was completed in 2007.
The project envisaged that the reconstruction of the Khanarkh channel will provide water supply of settlements and arable land of seven northern regions of Azerbaijan. At the same time it would take away the burden from the reconstructed parts of the Samur-Absheron canal and the canal will completely repurpose to drinking water supply of Baku and Sumgait. The existing Absheron channel will supply clean water to villages of the peninsula.
The total area of irrigated land in Azerbaijan today is 1.426 million hectares, of which 130 hectares is under occupation, and 30,000-40,000 hectares belongs to the border area. Moreover, the country has 189 reservoirs with total capacity of 21 billion cubic meters, 812 pumping stations, canals with total length of 50,000 kilometers and 6,500 artesian wells.
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