TEHRAN (ecoideal)- Deputy Head of Iranian Railway Company Hossein Ashouri announced that the project to connect Iran to Afghanistan has made significant progress and is about to end.
"The project was 80 percent through overall while 50 kilometers of kilometers of the railroad has been constructed in Afghanistan's soil," Ashouri said.
He reiterated that the railroad has so far reached the border from the Iranian side though its extension on the Afghan soil will be completed by the end of the next Iranian year (will begin on March 21, 2018).
Upon completion, the railroad will link the Iranian city of Khwaf in the Northeastern Khorasan Razavi Province to Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city. The first section of the route, from Khwaf to the mine-rich city of Sangan, became operational early September. The second section extends to the border city of Shamtigh in Afghanistan. The other two sections are in the Afghan territory covering 114 km from Shamtigh to Herat. The 62-km section 3, connecting Shamtigh to Ghurian, is being built by Iran.
At another part of his remarks, Ashouri reported on displacement of 19 million tons of goods through rail transit in the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year (began March 21, 2017).
"The figure indicated a 15-percent growth as compared to last year's corresponding period,” the official added.
In a relevant development in late December, Senior railway officials from Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan were finalizing talks to launch a joint railway linking the four countries.
"Negotiations are being made in line with a recent visit by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to the Central Asian countries," Iran's Railway Official Mir Hassan Moussavi said.
He underlined that Iran has plans to boost rail connections with regional countries, particularly those in Central Asia and Caucasus, to facilitate transfer of goods between Asia and Europe.
"The railway officials from the four countries have put negotiations on their agenda and their next meeting is scheduled to be held six months later," Moussavi added.
In December 2014, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani underlined that the joint railway that links Iran to Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan on the Eastern side of the Caspian Sea and came into operation will help the three nations to further broaden their relations in different areas.
"Expansion of relations among the three countries of Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan is the main goal and desire of the people of the three countries by inaugurating the international railway on the East of Caspian Sea," President Rouhani said in the Northern province of Golestan, addressing a joint press conference with his Turkmen and Kazakh counterparts on the sidelines of the railway inaugural ceremony.
He noted that during the trilateral meeting held in Inche-Boroun at the Iran-Turkmenistan borderline earlier today, he and his Turkmen and Kazakh counterparts decided to expand the economic relations among the three countries and use the joint railway for the same purpose.
The length of the railway is about 908 km of which 120 km is in Kazakhstan, 700 in Turkmenistan and 88 km in Iran.
The railway route connects the Commonwealth of the Independent States (CIS) countries to the Persian Gulf and the South East Asian nations.
Source: Farsnews