Finance minister Lasha Khutsishvili and Konstantin Limitovskiy, a senior investment officer at the AIIB, signed the agreement under the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor project, Business Media Georgia reported at 13:30 Tbilisi time on Monday, citing the ministry. Trend put the sum at €158.42 million, about $182 million, and the venue at the AIIB's 11th annual meeting in Doha.
The money builds Lot 4 of the Kakheti highway, Badiauri to Chalaubani, 21.7 kilometres, Lot 5, Chalaubani to Bakurtsikhe, 9.1 kilometres, and the 36.6-kilometre road from Gurjaani to Telavi. The road package costs €316.8 million; the World Bank has approved €158 million of it, the ministry said. Georgia's Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure is the executing agency and the Roads Department manages the works.
Trend put the sum at €158.42 million, about $182 million, and the venue at the AIIB's 11th annual meeting in Doha.
The parent project is the World Bank's Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor, Georgia Accessibility and Transport Enhancement project, approved on 2 June with the bank's $372 million, a total above $750 million and the AIIB and the Asian Development Bank as co-financiers. Besides the Kakheti roads it buys new electric locomotives for the railway, and the bank said the road sections cut travel times by about 43 minutes.
The AIIB's €158 million lands 4 days after Kobakhidze priced Georgia's corridor at the United Nations at $7 billion of infrastructure to 2032. Kakheti is the eastern end of that map: the highway runs from Tbilisi towards the Azerbaijani border at Lagodekhi, and the four-lane sections now financed are the middle of it.