Vice Prime Minister: Construction of "North-South" road is an important investment in Armenia`s further development

ArmInfo. Vice Prime Minister of Armenia Mher Grigoryan received the head of the Armenian office of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Shane Rosenthal.

According to the press service of the Armenian government, during the meeting Shane Rosenthal congratulated Mher Grigoryan on assuming the post of vice-premier, expressing hope that the path and experience he had will help to develop effective activity for the benefit of the Republic.

Shane Rosenthal presented to the Vice Prime Minister the process of programs implemented with the assistance of ADB, in particular, in such areas as the development of infrastructures, education, energy, etc.  The interlocutors also touched upon the implementation of the process of building the North-South highway. The vice-premier considered it necessary to implement this project quickly and effectively. He stressed that the program is an important investment in the further development of Armenia.

As ArmInfo informed earlier, $ 47 million will be allocated to the continuation of the program for the construction of the North-South transport corridor in 2018. The funds will be attracted in the form of credit resources from the Asian Development Bank, the European Investment Bank and the Eurasian Development Bank, and 2.8 billion AMD is to be received in the form of a grant from the European Investment Bank. The main front of the work this year will unfold on 84 km of the highway, on which it is planned to lay concrete for 40-45 km. The works, in particular, will be carried out on the road section from the cities of Ashtarak to Gyumri. As a result, the road from 2 lanes will expand to 4, and instead of asphalt will be laid concrete.

Meanwhile, at the end of September last year, at the meeting with journalists, the then minister of transport, communications and information technologies of Armenia Vahan Martirosyan informed that according to current calculations, the construction of the entire 556-kilometer North-South highway stretching from Bavra to Meghri will be cost more than $ 2 billion, since only its southern section, between the cities of Artashat and Meghri, is estimated to cost $ 1.5 billion, according to preliminary estimates. Meanwhile, five years ago, in September 2012, when the construction of the highway began, the amount that the government representatives called was less than half $ 962 million. Today, $ 150.3 million is spent and 23.14 million EUR. At the moment, only a 31 km section has been built and modernized, for which $ 70 million was spent.  The rest was directed to excavation work on the Ashtarak-Talin and Talin-Gyumri sections. Also, work was carried out on concreting the road 11 km. The construction of the corridor was originally planned to be completed in 2019. Already today it is officially announced that the terms are postponed for more than 2 years.

Under the "North-South" program, the Armenian government calculated the preliminary savings of $ 2.5 per hour for each passenger and $ 1 per hour for transporting a ton of cargo. As the authorities of Armenia expect, the program will allow the country in the future to mitigate the consequences of the blockade by Azerbaijan and Turkey, to play the role of a transit state in the freight transportation of the countries of the region, and also to join the Black Sea ring highway.