Iraq has invited global companies to build a rail network linking its southern Faw Port with Turkey as part of a massive post-war construction progamme, the official Iraqi Alsabah newspaper reported on Sunday. 

The General Company for Iraqi Railways, a subsidiary of the Iraqi Transport Ministry, is offering the project and other domestic rail network projects as investment given the country’s severe cash crunch due to weak oil prices and internal hostilities over the past few years. 

Alsabah quoted the Company’s Director Talib Al-Husseini as saying several rail projects would be executed “on an investment basis” including the Faw-Turkey rail, a rail linking Basra city with Faw, and a metro in the central Karbala governorate. 

Husseini said he discussed such projects with PEG of Italy, Turkey’s Yapi Merkezi and other companies interested in executing such projects. 

“We are talking only with serious companies to execute such important and strategic projects...we intend to have more talks in this respect,” he said. 

Iraq presented mega rail projects worth nearly 30 billion dollars at an international donor conference held in neighboring Kuwait in Feb 2018. 

The largest project involves the construction of a 910-km rail network linking the capital Baghdad to the Southern oil-rich port of Basra at a cost of around $13.7 billion. 

Another project includes building a 700-km rail line connecting the capital Baghdad with the Northern Kirkuk and Mosul cities at a cost of $8.6 billion.

(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@refinitiv.com

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