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Bloomberg
Azerbaijan is opening a long-delayed railway intended to cut transport times for goods between Asia and Europe.
President Ilham Aliyev is due to host Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Georgian leader Giorgi Margvelashvili at a ceremony on Monday for the departure of the first train from the Caspian Sea port of Alat, south of the Azeri capital, Baku. The event, which Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is also expected to attend, marks the conclusion of a 10-year project to open a rail corridor linking central Asia and Europe through the Caucasus region.
The 826-kilometre railway from Baku to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and the Turkish city of Kars may deliver cargo between China and Europe in 12 to 15 days, making it a competitive alternative to existing routes that go via Russia or Iran, and much faster than sea freight, according to the Azeri government.
The port at Alat, which Azerbaijan says is the largest in
the Caspian Sea region, was built to provide connections to central Asia.
As much as 8 million tons of cargo may be carried on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway by 2025, according to the Azeri government. Passenger services are also planned to start along the route next year, including sleeper-car services between Baku and Istanbul.
The project, initially scheduled for completion in 2010 and then in 2012, suffered repeated delays as construction costs mounted. It failed to win financial backing from the US and the European Union because the railway deliberately avoided passing through Armenia, whose Soviet-era track would have offered the most direct route to Turkey.
Azerbaijan has invested $640 million from its sovereign wealth fund into upgrading existing track on its section of the line, and helping Georgia to modernise 153 kilometres of railway to the Turkish border. Turkey built a new 76-kilometre section of rail from Kars to the Georgian border.