Iraqi authorities have announced that designs for the new Baghdad Metro project have been completed.

Spanning over 148km, the US $2.5bn project will feature 64 stations covering 85% of the city including all holy sites, colleges and tourism districts, stated Nasser Al Asadi, the Iraqi Prime Minister’s advisor on transport affairs, as per a report by the Iraqi News Agency.

Last month, authorities began inviting bids for the project for which a total of 26 multinational corporations from China, India, Germany, Italy, Spain and Qatar expressed their interests in the project.

The project is being developed under the DBOMFT (design, build, operate, maintain, finance and transfer) ownership model, he added.

At a key meeting held last month with Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia Al Sudani, the representatives of China Railway demonstrated the company’s capacity to take part in executing the project, the report noted.

The Chinese company is implementing the Nisour Square development project in central Baghdad as part of the government’s projects to relieve traffic congestion in the Iraqi capital, the report concluded.