Azernews.Az

By Gunay Camal

Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway project will be completed by late 2016, said Ziya Mammadov, Azerbaijan's Transportation Minister.

He made the remarks during the opening ceremony of the 15th Anniversary International Transport, Transit and Logistics Exhibition and the 4th Caspian International Road Infrastructure and Public Transport Exhibition in Baku on May 11.

"The corridor's commissioning primarily depends on the work on Turkey's territory, since the project is being implemented on the territory with very rugged relief," said the minister. "But all the difficulties are behind, the work is underway. Primarily, the technological part, including the work on connecting the stations to the centralized control system is underway."

The minister further emphasized that the BTK project is of great importance for not only Azerbaijan and the region, but also for the entire Eurasia.

"This transportation corridor will connect countries, nations and even entire civilizations," he said, adding that Central Asian and Northern European countries show interest in this project.

Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is being constructed on the basis of the Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The peak capacity of the corridor will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At the initial stage, this figure will be equal to one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.

The minister, who spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the event, said that a number of private Turkish companies want to operate in the Caspian Sea.

Particularly, the private transportation companies of Turkey are interested in the cargo transit via the Baku-Aktau-Baku and the Baku-Turkmenbashi-Baku routes, he explained.

"This issue is currently under discussion," said Mammadov, adding that the national and business interests should also be taken into account.

"If the proposals put forward by the Turkish companies meet Azerbaijan's interests, it will be possible to fulfill them," he said, adding that otherwise, this issue won't be discussed.

Earlier, Turkey's Economy Minister Mustafa Elitas told Trend that the crisis in relations between Russia and Turkey increases the relevance of the Trans-Caspian corridor in the transportation of cargos through Azerbaijan to the markets in Central Asia.

He said the Trans-Caspian corridor should become a priority in the cargo transportations, adding that his country held meetings with the representatives of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan on the effective use of the Trans-Caspian transportation corridor.

The Trans-Caspian international transport route runs through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and then to Europe via Turkey and Ukraine. The first test container train on route Shihezi (China)-Dostyk-Aktau-Alat, arrived in Baku international sea trade port on August 3, 2015.

The test container train on the route Ukraine-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Kazakhstan-China (through the Caspian and Black Seas) departed January 15 from Illichivsk and arrived in China January 31.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine decided to apply the competitive feed-in tariffs for cargo transportation via the TITR in January, 2016.

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