/By AzerNews/

By Amina Nazarli

Turkey is ready to take part in the privatization process of state property in Azerbaijan.

Turkish Ambassador to Azerbaijan Ismail Alper Coskun has announced about this while talking to journalists in Baku on January 28.

Recently President Ilham Aliyev has noted the need to prepare a broad program of privatization, attracting both foreign and local investors, to improve the business environment and accelerate business revival.

Last year some 685 small state enterprises, unfinished buildings, vehicles, 456 plots of land, and 20 joint-stock companies were privatized in the country.

Finance Minister Samir Sharifov recently noted this year Azerbaijan expects to receive some 100 million manat ($61.35 million) from the privatization of state property.

Coskun further said that construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway will be completed in the current year.

Initially, the commissioning of the railway, which will connect Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey together, was scheduled for 2014 and then for late 2015.

The delays in the project, the ambassador explained, were caused by the technical problems, which have now been solved.

SOFAZ is financing the project in accordance to an Azerbaijani presidential decree titled “On the implementation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project activities” dated to 2007. Azerbaijan has allocated two loans totaling $775 million for the construction of the Georgian section.

The corridor, constructed based on the Georgia-Azerbaijan-Turkish interstate agreement, will have the capacity of 17 million tons per year. At the initial stage, the figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.