RAILWAYS BYPASSING TBILISI

Messenger
Nov 12 2008
Georgia

Georgian Railways has announced an international tender for building
a railway line bypassing Tbilisi. Applications are to be submitted
by November 21. A special tender commission will be set up to select
the winner.

Companies selected to proceed to the second stage of the process will
be given six months to produce final, detailed projects. The winner
will be obliged to produce a guarantee letter (proxy) from a bank or
insurance company for 5% of the project cost. Last year on October
16, 2007 the same sort of tender was announced but after 2 days it
was withdrawn because Georgian Railways needed more time to work on
watertight preconditions for such a large scale and serious project.

It is known that since it purchased Armenia railways the Russian
national railway service has expressed a special interest in Georgian
Railways, however with Russian tanks 40 kilometres from Tbilisi
there is not much probability of their submitting an acceptable
tender. Foreign Department representative of Russian railways
Aleksander Vasilev has stated that his company does not consider
participating in the tender.