Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran have signed an agreement on establishing a joint venture for creating a north-south railway corridor.
The head office of the joint venture will be located in Moscow, Russia, and its affiliates will be located in Baku in Azerbaijan and Tehran in Iran.
The joint venture will prepare a business plan for building the railway Rasht-Astara (Iran) - Astara (Azerbaijan) in four months on the basis of build-operate-transfer contract for 15 years, after which the project will be reviewed.
The participating countries plan to invest about $400m in the construction of the railway, through their banks, which could be mostly Russian banks as well as other regional financial institutions.
Initially, the freight traffic volume on the proposed railway will be six million tons per year, which is expected to subsequently increase to 20 million tons per year, according to en.trend.az.
