On the section of the Yerevan-Artashat motorway of the transport corridor"North-South" found cracks: the Ministry of Transport has no complaints.

ARMINFO News Agency, Armenia
July 13, 2017 Thursday


On the section of the Yerevan-Artashat motorway of the transport
corridor"North-South" found cracks: the Ministry of Transport has no
complaints.

Yerevan 13.07.17

Naira Badalyan. On the road sectionYerevan-Artashat transport corridor
"North-South" found a crack.This was stated by the Minister of
Transport, Communications and Information Technologies Vahan
Martirosyan on July 13 after the meeting of the government, stressing
that the service contract with the construction company of the Spanish
"Corsan Corviam" was not completed due to which the Ministry of
Transport demanded restoration.

Meanwhile, the Spanish company in Armenia, more precisely in road
construction of the country, "became famous" for a long time. Back in
July last year, former head of government Hovik Abrahamyan said that
the Spanish construction company has become a real evil for the
highway "North- South. "Abrahamyan said about the financial problems
of the Spanish company and that the Ararat road is still" in the
problems and made poor. "" There are some problems with this company
and I do not know with whom: They say there is no money, They were
just taken away, "Abrahamyan instructed, in addition to information in
the media that because of the" Armenian traditional "corruption, the
Spaniards are not able to carry out the construction of the
North-South road, information has also appeared that against the
Spanish organization

A criminal case was opened, which was confirmed in the Ministry of
Finance ac ross. The Ministry reported that "on October 10th 2014. On
the second part of the 205th article of the RA Criminal Code, a
criminal case was instituted in connection with tax evasion on a
particularly large scale by the Armenian branch of the joint-stock
company Corsan Corviam. At the same time, the Ministry of Transport
recorded deficiencies for which the Spanish company was fined $ 5.7
million. Now the works are being carried out according to the
schedule. However, today the Minister of Transport assures that today
the quality of work of the construction company does not cause
censures. The other day the minister visited the Ashtarak- Tallinn
section and did not note any criticism from both engineers and
specialists from the Ministry and the BCP. "Works on the
Yerevan-Ashtarak section will be completed in autumn 2017," Vahan
Martirosyan assured.

It should be noted that on June 27 at the budget hearings in the
parliament Gagik Grigoryan, the first deputy minister of transport,
communications and information technologies of Armenia, stated that
the North- South highway is ahead of schedule. According to him,
instead of the planned 17.3 billion drams already used 24 billion
drams. Work on the first tranche (Tranche 1), envisaged for the
Yerevan-Artashat and Yerevan-Ashtarak sections is almost complete, on
the route Ashtarak-Talin (Tranche 2) work is still under way. In the
third section (Tranche 3) of Talin-Gyumri, excavation work is carried
out and a trial laying of concrete is under way.

The construction of the highway "North-South" with a total length of
556 km will provide access to the Black Sea and European countries
through the territory of Armenia (Meghri-Kapan-Goris-Yerevan-
Ashtarak-Gyumri-Bavra) and Georgia.

The $ 1 billion investment program is aimed at securing the connection
between the north (the border with Georgia) and southern Armenia (the
border with Iran) through transport communications that meet high
international standards and access to world markets. The road will be
covered with concrete. To implement the project, Armenia raised a loan
from the Asian Development Bank in the amount of $ 500 million.
Another $ 150 million will be provided by the Eurasian Development
Bank. The Armenian side also attracted 60 million euros from the
European Investment Bank for the implementation of the project. The
construction of the corridor is planned to be completed in 2019. Under
the "North-South" program, the Armenian government calculated the
preliminary savings of $ 2.5 per hour for each passenger and $ 1 per
hour for transporting a ton of cargo. As the authorities of Armenia
expect, the program will allow the country in the future to mitigate
the consequences of the blockade on the part of Azerbaijan and Turkey,
to play the role of a transit state in the freight transportation of
the countries of the region, and also to join the Black Sea ring
highway.