ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Baghdad has begun the process of registering land along the Development Road route in the southern provinces.
“The cadastral maps for the Development Road project have been submitted to the provinces of Dhi Qar, Muthanna, Diwaniyah, and Basra,” Maysam Safi, spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation, told Rudaw on Thursday.
The cadastral maps outline the ownership of lands along the project’s route - whether state-owned or privately held - in order to take the necessary steps to register them under the relevant ministries involved in the Development Road project.
“These maps include the numbers of land plots and parcels that fall along the Development Road,” Safi said.
Spanning 1,200 kilometers, the Development Road project begins at Basra’s Faw Port on the Persian Gulf and stretches to the northern borders with Turkey. The $17 billion corridor will feature both railways and highways designed to transport goods and passengers with the goal of making Iraq a trade hub.
Safi said that secondary registration committees - led by the governors of the four provinces - will begin the process of registering lands along the Development Road route.
Provincial councils must approve the route before construction can begin.
Ahmed Ibrahim, spokesperson for the Dhi Qar Provincial Council, told Rudaw that the committees have not yet been formed and the project’s route through the province has not been put to a vote. The council is scheduled to meet on May 20 to review and discuss the proposed map.
The first phase of the Development Road project is expected to be completed by 2028, with final completion planned for 2050.
Officials say the Development Road will strengthen Iraq’s geopolitical standing, boost the national economy, and create thousands of jobs by linking the country to European markets via Turkey. However, it has been a point of contention between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which is concerned that there are no major highway or railway connections to the Kurdistan Region in the plan. Erbil has warned that centralizing trade routes through federal territories could weaken the Region’s control over cross-border trade and customs excise.
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