Baku-Tbilisi-Kars to attract new investments in Turkey

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway will attract new investments in Turkey after commissioning, Kenan Yavuz, the head of SOCAR Turkey Enerji, said Jan. 12, the Turkish newspaper Dunya reported.

He said that this project is an ideal opportunity to connect the East and the West.

Earlier, Javid Gurbanov, the chairman of Azerbaijan Railways CJSC, said that a test freight train of five carriages, which was moving from Baku to the Akhalkalaki station, has been successfully launched via the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars route.

Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is being constructed on the basis of a 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.

A new 105-kilometer branch of the railroad is being constructed as part of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project. In addition, the railway's Akhalkalaki-Marabda-Tbilisi section is under reconstruction in Georgia that will increase its capacity to 15 million metric tons of cargo per year. A depot is under construction in Akhalkalaki for the transition of trains from the existing tracks in Georgia to the European ones.

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. (Trend.az)