Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.23
By Emil Ismayilov - Trend:
Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway project will open great opportunities for the three participating countries and for the states showing interest in this transport corridor to create close ties in the transport sphere, head of Azerbaijani Railways CJSC Arif Asgarov told Trend.
"The implementation of BTK project which is one of the most important international projects for Azerbaijan, is in the focus of attention of the governments and Azerbaijani, Georgia and Turkish railways," he said.
Asgarov added that the work on the implementation of this project is underway and there is a growing interest in it.
The commissioning of this railway will allow to increase the volume of cargo transportation between Europe and Asia.
A test train is expected to run on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway by late 2014 and it is planned to complete the implementation of the project in 2015.
Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is being constructed on the basis of the Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement.
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.
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India show interest in this project.
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.
Earlier, Azerbaijan's Transport Minister Ziya Mammadov said that after the three years of operation of BTK, the volume of cargo transportation via this railway is expected to hit three million metric tons, while after five and ten years of operation, this figure is forecast to exceed five million metric tons and 10 million metric tons respectively.
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