Turkmenistan and Georgia Transport Infrastructure Review

Since Turkmenistan began construction of its expressway, a 312 km section has been put into operation in less than five years, from 2019 to 2024.

According to this indicator, the intensity of construction of the expressway in Turkmenistan is an average of 62 km per year.

For comparison, the construction of the East-West Expressway in Georgia began in 2007, and by 2024, only 300 km of the section had been put into operation, which corresponds to an average of 18 km per year.

In fact, Turkmenistan is building its own expressway infrastructure at a pace 3.5 times faster than Georgia.

Based on such a comparison, one can conclude how slowly Georgia's transport infrastructure is developing.

It is noteworthy that the low pace of road infrastructure construction in Georgia directly affects Georgia's positioning as determined by the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index (LPI).

For example, according to the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) infrastructure indicator, Georgia ranks 108th in the world, which is naturally not a satisfactory result for a country with transit ambitions.

Georgia lags behind almost all countries in the region in the World Bank’s infrastructure component. For comparison, Turkey ranks 43rd, Belarus ranks 68th, Armenia ranks 76th, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan ranks 80th, and Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan ranks 89th.

In fact, among the countries in the region, Georgia ranks better than only Moldova (ranked 132nd) in terms of infrastructure.

This comparison is enough to clearly see the trend of how rapidly neighboring countries are developing their own infrastructure.

As of July 1, 2025, Turkmenistan, with the financial support of the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), has attracted $5.3 billion in investment for the construction of its own transport infrastructure, including a high-speed transit highway.

Naturally, we must once and for all put an end to the opinion that if a country has oil or gas resources, then it is provided with financial flows and this is the dominant argument in decision-making.

Contrary to this opinion, the example of Turkmenistan is clear evidence of how effectively and in a short time the state in question absorbs investments received from banking and financial institutions.

Info: transcor.ge