The Armenian railway has priorities, and the development of the sector in general is a priority for the Armenian government. It has been decided to form a working group, which will include Armenian officials responsible for the sector and Russian officials responsible for the sector, and railway partners who are currently implementing concession management. The Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure of Armenia, Davit Khudatyan, stated this in an interview with Armenian News-NEWS.am on the sidelines of the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan.
Khudatyan stated this referring to the remark that earlier, the position of the Armenian side on this matter was tougher, it was said that the concession management of the Armenian railway network should be transferred to a third party, but now it seems that there is a softening of this position, and the Armenian side is now seems to be saying, “Let's wait, see if the Russian side makes an investment or not.”
“The working group has been given tasks, and we expect the working group to respond to these questions in a short time.
Depending on the results of the working group’s work and the answers given to them regarding these priorities, we will decide on further actions. At the moment, that’s all the information; we have discussed exclusively issues related to it.
We continue to say what Armenia’s priorities are regarding the railway, we expect that the partners will give a clear timetable for organizing these priorities. As long as there is no such timetable, it is difficult to talk about anything,” the minister added.
To the question of what impressions he received from the discussions with the Russian side, Khudatyan replied: “The work of the working group will show what our impressions will be. We still have priorities regarding the railway, we have our own idea of the development of the railway.”
“You know that the recent changes in the region enable to connect Armenia by rail with countries that, for example, could not even be imagined five or six years ago. This is why we now see a priority in exposing these issues, and I hope that the activities of the working group will be aimed at precisely that," the minister concluded.