European countries agree on railway tunnel construction
18 September 2012Georgia and Turkey have agreed to sign an agreement on the construction of a railway tunnel on the Akhalkalaki-Kars railway line of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars route, local media in Turkey reported earlier today.
The meeting between Jaba Ebanoidze, head of the Georgia Revenue Service, and Ziya Altunialdiz, minister for customs matters of Turkey, was held in Istanbul. The agreement allows the simplification of border crossing procedures with the freeing of imports into Georgia from all customs duties and to create a temporary border checkpoint.
This document established is a legal basis for the purposes that customs administrations have done everything to ensure that the
construction of a railway tunnel was completed in the shortest possible time.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars transport corridor project includes the construction of the Kars-Akhalkalaki railway branch with a length of
98km, of which 68 km is in Turkey and 30 km in Georgia. A 183km section of the Akhalkalaki-Marabda-Tbilisi railway will be
reconstructed, which will increase the cargo carrying capacity to 15Mt every year.
