Davutoglu said the project for construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway is very important for Turkey.
He said Turkey is aiming at turning the country’s territory into an energy corridor, which will connect the South Caucasus and Europe.
The BTK railway is being constructed in line with the Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish interstate agreement.
Azerbaijan’s State Oil Fund (SOFAZ) is financing the project in accordance with the Azerbaijani president’s decree ‘On implementation of measures on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project’, dated Feb. 21, 2007.
The railway’s new 105-kilometer branch is being constructed as part of the project.
Aside from that, the railway’s Akhalkalaki-Marabda- Tbilisi section in Georgia is being reconstructed. This will increase its capacity to 15 million metric tons of cargo per year.
A station is also being built in the Georgian town of Akhalkalaki to move trains from the existing tracks in Georgia to the European ones.
The railway’s annual highest capacity will be 17 million metric tons of cargo. At the initial stage this figure will stand at 1 million passengers and 6.5 million metric tons of cargo.
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