​Turkish media: Construction of the Turkish section of Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway suspended

Baku. 18 November. REPORT.AZ/ Construction work on 76 km section in Turkey of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway is suspended. Report informs citing the Zaman Turkish newspaper, the reason was the failure of the contractor (Özgün-Çelikler Yapı) to perform all the planned work.

According to the newspaper, they invested approximately 101,964,000 AZN (290 million TL) in the construction of the Turkish section, however only 39% of the planned work is completed for today.

Afterwards, the project cost has doubled due to the necessity of construction of tunnels and stations in bottlenecks. Now, however, the total cost of construction of the Turkish section increased to up 527 million AZN (1,5 million TL).

This discrepancy in final and initial calculations seriously disturbs the Turkish government, so they created an inspection group to ascertain the circumstances.

The commissioning of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is planned for late 2015 and the pilot train launch is scheduled to the end of this year.