THERE IS NO ROAD BACK IN ISSUE OF IMPLEMENTING PROJECT ON CONSTRUCTION OF ARMENIA-IRAN RAILWAY, ARMENIAN PRIME MINISTER STATES

Noyan Tapan

Nov 19, 2008

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 19, NOYAN TAPAN. The Armenian government has made
a political decision that the construction of an Armenia-Iran railway
is necessary for Armenia, and the work in this direction has already
been launched with state budgetary resources. There is no road back in
the issue of implementing this project, the RA prime minister Tigran
Sargsyan stated on November 18.

In his words, the projects including three versions of the railway’s
construction were developed by Armenian research institutes long ago,
there are preliminary calculations, and the Armenian government has
conducted all the basic studies. Nevertheless, additional design work
will be done jointly with experts of the Asian Development Bank (ADB)
with ADB’s grant money, which will enable to update the indicated
projects and make calculations related to the use of modern equipment.

The RA minister of transport and communication Gurgen Sargsyan said
that out of the three versions of constructing an Armenia-Iran railway,
the version of a 447-km railway is the preferable one. In case of
two other versions, the railway will be either 373 km long or 443 km
long. In case of all the three versions, the railway will be built from
the border of two countries to Jermuk, and by the preferable version,
it will pass through Selim mountain pass, Martuni, Gavar and reach
the operating Gagarin station. By the estimates of the minister,
the railway’s construction will take 5 years.

According to him, the design of the indicated railway and a parallel
motorway to be built will be done with a million dollar grant to be
provided by ADB to Armenia. In the experts’ opinion, construction of
Armenia-Iran railway will cost 1.5-2 billion dollars.
From: Baghdasarian