Iraq has completed almost half the designs for a $17-billion project to construct a rail line stretching from its Southern Faw Port to the Northern border with Turkey, the country’s Transport Minister said in press comments on Wednesday.

Razzak Al-Saadawi said the Ministry has already completed a feasibility study for the 1,200-km rail and is about to start studies for the design of a parallel motorway.

“We have completed nearly 50 percent of the rail project and also entered the stage of preparing designs for the motorway,” Saadawi said in a statement published by the official Iraqi news agency INA.

The Minister did not make clear if designs for the two projects, dubbed “The Development Road,” have been awarded to any company.

(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)

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