Railways bypassing Tbilisi

Georgian Railways has announced an international tender for building a railway line bypassing Tbilisi. Applications are to be submitted by November 21. A special tender commission will be set up to select the winner.

Companies selected to proceed to the second stage of the process will be given six months to produce final, detailed projects. The winner will be obliged to produce a guarantee letter (proxy) from a bank or insurance company for 5% of the project cost. Last year on October 16, 2007 the same sort of tender was announced but after 2 days it was withdrawn because Georgian Railways needed more time to work on watertight preconditions for such a large scale and serious project.

It is known that since it purchased Armenia railways the Russian national railway service has expressed a special interest in Georgian Railways, however with Russian tanks 40 kilometres from Tbilisi there is not much probability of their submitting an acceptable tender. Foreign Department representative of Russian railways Aleksander Vasilev has stated that his company does not consider participating in the tender.