The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway is expected to be opened in 2017, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Foreign Minister of Turkey said during a meeting with Georgian counterpart Mikheil Janelidze.
On Turkey’s territory there are 79 km of BTK line, while 58 km accounts for the Kars province. Turkey is also planning to construct a logistics center in the Kars province within the framework of the project. With this purpose, the old building of the railway station is being demolished to make room for the new project.
In Novermber, the governor of Turkey’s Kars province Rahmi Dogan, said that the tests on Turkey’s territory will start in January 2017.
In addition, in an article published on the World Economic Forum website, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said that the BTK line should be finalized this year. “This year, construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is scheduled for completion. The implementation of this project will consequently decrease the transportation time of the goods from China to Europe from between 25 to 30 days to 12 to 15,” Aliyev noted.
The BTK railway is being constructed on the basis of the Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The peak capacity of the railway will be 17 million tons of cargo per year.
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