Wednesday, October 4 2017 17:57

ArmInfo. Minister of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies of Armenia Vahan Martirosyan received the Italian Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Armenia Giovanni Richuli on 4 October. During the meeting Vahan Martirosyan noted the importance of the strong foundations of the Armenian-Italian cooperation in the field of transport and road construction.

According to Armenian Transport ministry press service, the head of the agency touched on the programs of road construction carried out with involving Italian companies and Italian specialists, noting the importance of their more active participation.

Speaking about the current and further process of the investment program "North-South Road Corridor", the minister presented positive and negative results of the work of Italian companies involved in the program. He stressed that the ministry's representatives carry out daily monitoring in the direction of correcting the existing shortcomings. The minister also asked the ambassador to keep the issue in the center of attention.

The meeting discussed a number of issues related to the draft protocol on the introduction of amendments to the agreement on international transport of passengers and goods between the governments of Armenia and Italy.

Minister Martirosyan also presented to the Ambassador the results of several international IT forums held in Yerevan in recent days, and expressed the hope that in the future the cooperation in this area and with Italian companies, will increase the involvement and representation of Armenian IT companies in Italy.

Recently, during a meeting with journalists, the Minister of Transport, Communications and IT Vahan Martirosyan said that earlier the whole North-South transport corridor project - from the northern to the southern border of Armenia was estimated at $ 962 million, today it is only a southern section, between the cities of Artashat and Meghri, according to preliminary estimates, will cost $ 1.5 billion, and the construction of the entire 556-kilometer highway, stretching from Bavry to Meghri, will cost more than $ 2 billion.

To note, spent $ 150.3 million and 23.14 million euros, which is approximately 11.6% of the total budget.  At the moment, only a 31 km section has been built and modernized, for which $ 70 million was spent. The rest was directed for excavation work on the Ashtarak-Talin and Talin-Gyumri sections. Also, work was carried out on concreting the road 11 km.