ECONOMY
Azerbaijan, ADB ink loan project
Baku, April 23 (AZERTAC). The Azerbaijan Government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have signed a loan agreement “Second Road Network Development Investment Program - Tranche 1” which aims to finance construction work on four-lane Masalli-Jalilabad motor road with the length of approximately 32.2 km and other project components.
The Southern Corridor is a major transportation artery for Azerbaijan. The existing southern corridor road, from Alyat to Astara (M3) is a 240 km two-lane road. Current road section is in poor condition, resulting in high transport costs, long delivery times and traffic accidents due to limited capacity, and has a high roughness index and is in need of major rehabilitation. Previous analyses have concluded that improvements on the southern corridor required building a totally new 4-lane road in order to minimize the resettlement problem that widening the existing road would have created. Improvement of the southern road corridor will provide a good road connection with Iran with expanded capacity and facilitate bilateral trade and transit trade at a faster rate; reduce the cost of transportation of agricultural products to Baku markets; and bring savings in travel time and transportation cost for all road users in general and for the local population in particular.