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Iran’s road ministry owes $1.8B to contractors

Business Materials 17 September 2014 16:16 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17

By Umid Niayesh - Trend:

Iran's Minister of Road and Urban Planning Abbas Akhondi says that the ministry owes about 50 trillion rials (approximately $1.88 billion based on official rate of 26,635 rials per each USD) to contractors.

Akhondi expressed hope that if the parliament approves the government's bill for bring the country out of recession, the ministry will be able to fix its debts through the mechanisms forecast in the package, Iran's Mehr news agency reported Sept. 17.

Earlier it was announced that the ministry's total debts to the contractors reaches 63 trillion rials.

Last week Iranian administration presented a bill to the parliament aimed to come out of the stagnation. The bill will come to vote in the parliament in the near future.

Explaining the ministry's plans for boosting the volume of transportation via railways, Akhondi said that the railways capacity for goods transportation is planed to reach 200 million metric tons per year by 2025.

The minister noted that 33 million metric tons of freight was transported through railways during the past Iranian fiscal year (ended on March 21).

Akhondi underlined importance of connecting Iran's railways to international routes, saying it will lead to boost of trade.

He said that the project of linking Iran -Turkmenistan railways within the North-South international corridor will be completed this fall.

The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) was established in 2000 by Iran, Russia and India in order to promote transportation cooperation among the members.

Later Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Oman, Syria and Bulgaria joined the corridor.

The corridor joins Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea through Iran and then reaches to St. Petersburg and North Europe via Russia.

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