Ministry of Transport of Armenia: Motorway "North-South" is built ahead of schedule

ArmInfo. The motorway "North -  South" is built ahead of schedule.  The first deputy minister of  transport, communications and information technologies of Armenia  Gagik Grigoryan made such statement today at the budget hearings in  the parliament.

According to him, instead of the planned 17.3 billion AMD already  used 24 billion AMD. The work on the first tranche (Tranche 1),  provided for the Yerevan-Artashat and Yerevan-Ashtarak sections, has  been completed almost completely, while the work Ashtarak-Talin  (Trench 2) is still underway. In the third section (Tranche 3) of  Talin-Gyumri, excavation work is carried out and a trial laying of  concrete is under way.

To note, the 4-lane "North-South" route is designed to significantly  reduce the distance and the time of the car from Iran to the Georgian  border. The distance will decrease from the present 556 to 495 km due  to the straightening of a number of mountain sites and the  construction of new ones, for example, from the town of Ararat  through the Vayots Dzor region to the Noravan village of the Sisian  region, and then to the city of Kajaran. The total cost of  construction will be about $ 960 million, the main creditor of the  project is the Asian Development Bank (about $ 500 million).

Earlier in October 2016, ArmInfo was told in the Office for the  Implementation of Investment Programs for the Construction of the  North-South Motorway, the first agreement on the North-South highway  was signed back in 2009, and the first contract agreement in 2012,  when the construction of the highway began, and $ 74mln of ADB's  loans were attracted within Tranche 1. In the framework of Tranche-2,  Ashtarak-Talin section, 42km in length, ADB allocated another $  180mln. On tranche-3, Ashtarak-Talin, Talin-Gyumri was attracted  another $ 60 million from ADB, (Talin Landik section - 18.7 km) and $  84 million were attracted from the European Investment Bank  (Landzhik-Gyumri - 27.5 km) .The Eurasian Development Bank provided  the loan for the implementation of Trash-4 Artashat-Agarak and to the  Iranian border (EDB) in the amount of $ 150 million. As for the works  and investments in the framework of the Tranche-5, during which the  construction of the Gyumri-Bavra site is planned, so far the search  for financing sources is underway, and it is too early to speak about  specific terms for the implementation of this section.