Railway Line to Provide Economic Boost

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway route will provide an economic boost for the development of the region, the Bulgarian Transport Ministry has noted.

"Our country’s aim is to provide suitable land and sea routes to serve the Euro-Asian traffic from the new railway corridor. Our analysts show that construction of a railway line along the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars route as part of the Silk Road, will offer an alternative to the route through Russia and will provide an economic boost for the development of the region," said the ministry.

The new link is expected to reduce the travel time between China and Europe, making it around 15 days, which is more than twice as fast compared to the sea route and half of the cost of air transport, according to the Bulgarian Transport Ministry.

"The Bulgarian side participated actively in the discussions on the new project of the multimodal transport corridor 'Persian Gulf-Black Sea.' The cooperation of the parties on the 'Persian Gulf-Black Sea' corridor would contribute to the development of transport links between Asia and Europe and to the establishment of effective trade routes between the European Union countries, including Bulgaria, to Iran. Our country has a strategic geographic location and has the potential to become a transport hub for Europe. With the realization of all priority transport directions and projects, Bulgaria will become Asia's most direct route to Europe," said the ministry.

The official opening ceremony of the BTK railway was held in Baku in October 30, 2017. The BTK railway was constructed on the basis of a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement.

The railway’s peak capacity will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At an initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.