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The construction of Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway is delayed. Experts claim that the constant postponement of the railway commissioning has rather political than technical reasons, writes the columnist of "IN" Victoria Panfilova in "Vestnik Kavkaza."

"Disagreements in the project implementation began almost from the first day. Initially, Turkey, recognized the importance of BTK, but complained about the high price of constructing a branch stretching from the Georgian city of Akhalkalak to Kars and pointed at the greater cost-effectiveness of de-preservation of the existing branch from Kars to the Armenian city of Gyumri. Some independent Turkish experts insisted on implementing the BTK project in this very form: the construction in that case would be less expensive, and Armenia's involvement in the project would bring a certain political détente in the region," the article reads.

However, according to the article, the absolute refusal of Baku to cooperate with Yerevan and its willingness to undertake the additional financial costs played a crucial role.

As for Georgia, here BTK project was initially perceived ambiguously, the author writes. The decision of the authorities to take a credit from Azerbaijan, even in one percent, and to sign a construction contract with the Azerbaijani side caused bewildered among the opposition as well as with the experts. "Azerbaijan needs the road, so it is him who has to pay for its construction," ex-Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili stated.

The independent experts started to talk about the treason of national interests: with the commissioning of the BTK the cargo flows from East to West and back will inevitably be redirect, and the Georgian ports will lose a part of the revenue.

The head of the Association of cross-border cooperation, Alexander Sobyanin, told the author, "Georgia is counting on a more active participation in the Azerbaijani transit and, first of all, in the transfer of hydrocarbons from the pipes onto the railway and then to Batumi port."

According to the article, observers do not rule out that one of the indirect causes of the BTC construction postponement could be the changing situation in Georgia. The thing is that after the change of power in Georgia, the new government of this country has been revised all of the major projects of their predecessors. And now the Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has announced about necessity of finding out the expediency of building BTK.

As for the plans of using the BTK by NATO for goods transit from Afghanistan to Europe, then according to A. Sobyanin, this is improbable. "The main route of taking out the cargo lies through Pakistan and Arabic countries to Europe. The so-called Caspian route (lying through the Kazakh port of Aktau to port of Azerbaijan and then through BTK) if it will be used anytime, then to a small extent as the route is expensive," Sobyanin said.

In general, according to the expert, the BTK is first of all a political project, and the talks about the workloads, about the enormous amounts of freight are hypothetical. "The route to Kars and, the railway network in Turkey, in general, was projected under the Eurasian transport corridor (TRACECA). However, the multimodal consignments that were allowed to transfer by the routes of international corridors – TRACECA, ESCAP (corridors of the UN) and other European corridors, showed that at present there are practically no transit goods if they are not politically motivated. The goods that Azerbaijani economy needs is not tied to the Georgian direction. They can be redirected in other routes as well, through Volgodon for example, or by the Russian railways. Speaking of critically important transport links for Azerbaijan, then it is the connection to Nakhichevan, but not transport connectivity with Turkey through Georgia," Alexander Sobyanin said.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars construction started in 2008. In December 2009, the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway was interrupted and resumed in May 2010. The railway project BTK includes the construction of the Kars-Akhalkalaki railway with the length of 98 km, of which 68 km are on the Turkish territory, 30 km on Georgian. The preliminary price of the project is $ 422 million, of which $ 202 million will be spent on the Georgian section construction, and $ 220 million on Turkish section construction.

After changing the route and the allocation of the additional funds the total price of Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project rose from $ 600 million to $ 1.2 billion. In 2007, Azerbaijan allocated to Georgia a soft loan of $ 200 million, for a period of 25 years at 1% per annum of the construction of the Georgian railway section. However, these funds were not enough, and in 2011 Azerbaijan allocated a loan of $ 575 million already at 5% per annum for the construction of the Georgian railway.