Turkmenistan to open railway to Afghanistan in November

Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov held a meeting dedicated to the upcoming commissioning of the first phase of the transnational railway trunk – Asia international railway transportation corridor, the Turkmen government said in a message Oct. 8, Trend reports.

This is the construction of the Atamyrat-Imamnazar (Turkmenistan) – Akina (Afghanistan) section. The completion of the construction and installation work is scheduled for early November 2016.

It is expected that the transportation corridor passing through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, will have an access to China’s extensive rail network and through it – to the rapidly developing states of the Asia-Pacific region.

Big socio-economic impact of the route’s commissioning is expected in Afghanistan, wrote the Turkmen Dovlet Habarlary state news service.

In that place, where the transnational railway trunk is being built, road, power lines, energy pipelines are built simultaneously, said the service.

As part of the first phase of the project, the 85-kilometer part of the Atamyrat-Imamnazar section has been built in Turkmenistan. Total length of the railway is 88 kilometers. The section between Imamnazar and Akina border posts is three kilometers.

The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan railway will be the next “golden link” of the Asia railway corridor, which, in turn, will be the most important segment of the international network of transportation communications between the two parts of the vast continent – Europe and Asia, the Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper reports.

Meanwhile, the commissioning of a terminal for receiving, storage and shipping of oil products is expected in November at the Imamnazar customs post.

President Berdimuhamedov also noted during the meeting that the development of the international transportation corridors meets Turkmenistan’s economic interests.