Business
Georgia to Tender Anaklia Rail Link by End of October
September 16, 2026
3
Min
Georgia expects to launch the construction tender for the railway line linking the Anaklia deep-sea port to the national network by the end of October, Economy and Sustainable Development Minister Mariam Kvrivishvili said, according to The Messenger on 14 September. Negotiations with international financial institutions have concluded and Georgian Railway has finalised the design, she said.
What was said
Speaking on Business Insider Georgia, Kvrivishvili said the government could now confirm for the first time that talks with its international financial partners were complete. The target is for the port to receive its first vessel in 2029, and the minister said a timetable exists that all relevant agencies are following. At the port itself, breakwater construction and dredging are running in parallel, with a second dredging vessel now on site.
The minister did not name the financing institutions, give a cost for the rail link, or say how long the line would be. Those details will presumably come with the tender documents.
Why the rail link is the real test
Anaklia has been announced, contracted, cancelled and re-launched over more than a decade, and the port basin is only half the project. A deep-water terminal without a rail connection is a very expensive ferry berth. Georgia's existing Black Sea ports, Poti and Batumi, are already rail-connected; Anaklia's value proposition to Middle Corridor shippers rests on being able to move containers straight from ship to train toward Baku and, via the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars line, to Türkiye.
The sequencing is therefore the story. Since China's CCCC exited the project and Tbilisi moved to a landlord model, the state has taken on the core infrastructure of breakwater, dredging, access road and rail, and plans to lease terminal operations. That is the structure used by most of the world's large ports, but it puts the timing risk squarely on the government budget and the IFIs it borrows from.
The numbers that matter
CBJ has previously reported that the phase-one budget was doubled to $1.1 billion under the landlord model. A 2029 first-vessel target gives roughly three years from a rail tender to a working intermodal port, which is achievable for a short spur if the tender closes on time and the contractor mobilises in 2027. It leaves almost no slack for appeals, redesigns or a bad winter on the Black Sea coast.
The demand side has moved in Anaklia's favour. Georgia's transit corridor handled 286,000 trucks in the latest count, the BTK railway is reported to be running at full capacity, and the EU has lined up around 2 billion euros for Caucasus transport. None of that cargo will route through Anaklia until the rail spur exists.
Caveats
By the end of October is a tender announcement, not a contract award, and Georgian infrastructure tenders have slipped before. The IFI negotiations are described as concluded, but no lender has publicly confirmed a loan for the rail link. And 2029 is a political date as much as an engineering one. The right way to read the announcement is that a necessary step is now scheduled, not that the port's timeline is secure.
