At the public hearing on the topic of “South Caucasus Union: Pros and Cons – Georgia’s Role and Potential” held on May 24, in the Georgian village of Tekali, the speaker and the Azerbaijani political scientist Zardusht Alizadeh stated that the projects on building the oil pipeline, gas pipeline and railway have bypassed Armenia, which is missing of the opportunity and loss of millions of dollars, and added, “Now, Turkey, in the face of Ahmet Davutoğlu, has offered Armenia, let’s at least restore the railway. Azerbaijani scientist Gular Bayramov and Fuad Rasulov have explored the potentials for rehabilitation of the railroad. Here is their research of how economically important and profitable is the project. They have calculated the minimum costs for rehabilitation of the railroad. Do you remember when we were destroying it, we were happy that we are demolishing the railroad taking to Armenia, and they also demolished the railway taking to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani scientists had compared the costs for rehabilitation of railroad and the revenues expected from its operation. The situation is as such: the costs by Azerbaijan for rehabilitation of the railroad, the investments, will amount to 264 million dollars, Armenia’s costs will amount to 103 million dollars, which is quite a lot of money, and the costs by Turkey will amount to 57 million dollars. There is no destroyed railroad in their territory, they can build a new railroad. With the operation of the railway, with the involvement of all available cargo, every year, the losses by Azerbaijan will amount to 26 million dollars, Armenia – 13 million dollars, Turkey- 3 million dollars. In other words, even if we run the railway, automatically, we do not get any profit with the current volume of cargo turnover and economic cooperation. It means that we need to raise the levels of our economic cooperation to a new level by phases to be able to multiply the volume of cargo, and only then the railroad will turn profitable.”
Voskan SARGSYAN
