ASIA: An equally-owned binational joint venture is to be set up to manage the Azeri and Georgian sections of the Baku – Tbilisi – Kars railway once current upgrading works are completed.
Azerbaijan’s and Georgia’s state railways currently hold sole responsibility for the sections of line within each country. Separately, Turkish infrastructure manager TCDD is responsible for the 76 km section in Turkey.
Rovshan Rustamov, CEO of Azerbaijan’s ADY which would own a 50% stake in the joint venture, made the announcement after inspecting rebuilding work on the Georgian section of the line along with his Georgian Railways counterpart David Peradze and TCDD’s Veysi Kurt.
Rustamov said that the rebuilding work on the 183 km long section through Georgia’s mountainous eastern region, most of which is over 2 400 m above sea level, was 95% complete. The work is being undertaken in five sections, of which one, two and four are now complete. It includes rebuilding stations, installing new electrical and signalling equipment and snow protection measures.
Rustamov explained that the work aims to help increase the volume of transit freight along the Middle Corridor between the Far East, Central Asia and Europe and vice versa.
‘Our goal is to increase the volume of cargo transportation over the line to 5 million tonnes per year, to make the line one of the most attractive parts of the Middle Corridor’, he said.
