TEHRAN - The Iranian and Iraqi railway companies will establish a joint venture within the next two months to implement the Shalamcheh-Basra project, Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Rostam Qassemi announced on Monday.
“An agreement was signed between the two countries to implement a 32-kilometer Shalamcheh-Basra railway connection project,” Qassemi said during his visit to Baghdad.
“The agreement has a definite timetable, and one of its clauses is that implementation will actually begin within the next month,” he added.
In a relevant development on Sunday, Qassemi met Director-General of the Iraqi Railways Company and the Director-General of the Iraqi Ministry of Planning to discuss the ways of developing cooperation of the two countries in various fields, including railway and exchanging experiences.
Iraq’s Council of Ministers had agreed earlier this year to connect the country’s railway to that of Iran through the Basra-Shalamcheh corridor.
Iran’s part of the railway connection with 17 kilometers length was constructed in 2011, but the 32-kilometer part of the Iraqi side has yet to be implemented by Iraq’s government.