Iraq’s Development Road to provide million job opportunities

A map showing the path of the Development Road in Iraq. Photo: The New Region Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – The designs for the Development Road project have reached their final stages and will be fully completed before the end of 2026, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Transport. The spokesperson for the Ministry of Transport, Ali al-Khalidi, said that the Development Road project is expected to generate approximately 100,000 job opportunities during its first phase. Plans include the construction of modern stations, industrial zones, and residential areas along the route, developments that could potentially create over a million jobs as the project and its associated facilities expand, according to al-Khalidi. The Iraqi official explained that 95 percent of the project’s railway designs have been completed, with 92 percent of the highway designs finished, the state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported. Extending from the al-Faw Grand Port in the southern province of Basra to the Turkish border, with both the highway and railway being parallel lines, the first phase of the project is expected to be completed in 2033. The Development Road’s primary objective is to transport goods from al-Faw Grans Port to Turkey—and onward to Europe—and vice versa. Work is currently underway to finalize an agreement with Turkey to establish a fund that would finance the project’s implementation by Turkish companies through an oil-for-financing arrangement, according to INA. The $17 billion project, which will connect the al-Faw Grand Port in southern Iraq to the Turkish border by constructing a railway and road network, is anticipated to transform Iraq into a transit center by cutting the time it takes to travel from Asia to Europe. In addition to pipelines for energy transportation, the project’s railway will significantly assist in the transportation of commodities, with a first-phase capacity of 3.5 million tons and a second-phase capacity of 7.5 million tons. By connecting the port city of Basra to Turkey via an overland route, the logistics project will compete with Egypt’s Suez Canal and establish Basra as a gateway to Europe.