RAIL TRADE AND TRANSPORT FACILITATION

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The objectives of the Rail Trade and Transport Facilitation Project are to improve railway services in Azerbaijan, as well as the competitiveness, financial sustainability, operating and cost efficiency, and capacity of Azerbaijan Railway (ADDY) in particular along the transport corridor toward Georgia. There are four components to the project. The first component consists of the Rehabilitation of east - west main line component which includes track signaling and power supply rehabilitation along the east-west corridor. It will rehabilitate about 240 km of mainline track in poor condition. The investment will remove the most critical speed restrictions and allow ADDY to handle existing and potential traffic at up to 100 kph for passenger trains and 80 kph for freight trains without significant track delays on those 240 km. It will finance the conversion of the power supply on the east-west corridor to 25kV, including new power stations, catenary and the related upgrade in signaling equipment. The second component consists of the new mainline locomotives component which will finance about 50 new mainline electric locomotives to operate on the East-West corridor. The third component consists of the modernization component which will include support for the full implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) accounting provision of advisory services to ADDY to implement its modernization program and provision o f equipment to ADDY to improve its oil spill prevention and response capacity. Finally the fourth component consists of total cost without contingencies. The project implementation component will provide training and consultant services to the Project Implementation Unit (PIU) for procurement, financial management, financial audit, monitoring as well as equipment required for project implementation.