Türkiye and the World Bank have signed a €1.67-billion ($1.81 billion) financing agreement for the Istanbul Northern Railway Crossing Project, local media reported Wednesday.

The agreement was signed at the World Bank headquarters in Washington on Tuesday by Turkish Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek and the World Bank Managing Director for Operations, Anna Bjerde.

The project, with a total investment of $8.1 billion, is about 83 per cent financed by international financial institutions.

Mr Simsek said the project aims to address a key bottleneck in the Middle Corridor, a trade route linking Beijing and London, by integrating an electrified railway line via the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge over the Bosphorus Strait.

He said the project would raise the Bosphorus rail freight capacity from three million tonnes to 50 million tonnes annually.

He said the initiative would ease one of the most critical logistical constraints along the Middle Corridor.

“By providing a high-capacity rail link across the Bosphorus, the corridor is expected to become more reliable and its strategic role in global trade more pronounced.

“The initiative is the third largest ever approved by the World Bank,” the minister said.

Ms Bjerde, on her part, described the corridor as “transformative,” saying it would strengthen connectivity across three key routes: the Middle Corridor, the Iraq-linked Development Road, and the Türkiye-Europe Corridor.

“Once completed, the project is expected to generate higher-income employment for more than 400,000 people,” she said. 

(Xinhua/NAN)