ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The Iraqi and Turkish transport ministries are preparing to finalize an agreement to implement Iraq’s landmark Development Road project, with the design phase now exceeding 95 percent completion, an Iraqi transport ministry official said on Sunday.

Hussein Ahmed, the Iraqi transport ministry’s head of media, said that the upcoming meeting between the two sides aims to draft the “final cooperation agreement” to be presented to the Iraqi cabinet and then sent to Parliament for ratification, “in preparation for signing the contracts and moving to the implementation phase.”

“The design phase, being carried out by an Italian company, has achieved a completion rate exceeding 95 percent for the road and approaching 90 percent for the railway line,” Ahmed told the state-owned al-Sabah newspaper.

He said that the previous meeting between the ministries and Iraq’s State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) focused on mechanisms for managing the financing aspect of the process, including the use of the country’s oil to finance the project under an “oil-for-reconstruction” formula.

In December, Iraq’s transport ministry said that the railway and highway systems of the landmark project are 87 and 73 percent complete, respectively.

The Development Road is a massive, multi-billion-dollar project that entails the expansion of railways, roads, and ports, shortening travel time between Asia and Europe and linking the Grand Faw Port in southern Iraq to the Turkish border.

The route will pass through Diwaniyah, Najaf, Karbala, Baghdad, and Mosul before entering Turkey’s Sirnak province and reaching Mersin on the Mediterranean Sea.

The project has generated around 100,000 jobs directly, according to the statement, with over 1.6 million other jobs having been created indirectly as a result of the expansive initiative.

Nasser al-Asadi, the Iraqi prime minister's transport advisor, said in October 2025 that Iraq has completed a detailed plan to manage and finance the Development Road Project in cooperation with the US-based consulting firm Oliver Wyman.

The architectural plan for the Development Road is structured in three phases, with phase one projected to be completed by 2028, while the second and third phases are expected to finish in 2033 and 2050 respectively.

The initial investment for the project is estimated at nearly $20 billion, with projected annual profits reaching approximately five billion dollars.