TEHRAN – Deputy Head of Iran Road Maintenance and Transportation Organization (RMTO) says the country’s roads need 120 trillion rials (about $2.8 billion) of the annual budget to be properly maintained, IRIB reported on Saturday.

According to Heidar Mataie, RMTO has tried to use the Pavement Management System (PMS) for collecting systemic data about the country’s roads in order to obtain a more scientific look and a better understanding of the state of the roads.

Referring to the PMS’s last year’s report, Mataie said: "According to the report, 32 percent of the country’s arterial roads are in perfect condition, 35 percent are a little damaged, 24 percent suffer moderate destruction, and nine percent have severe conditions.”

“Of the 88,000 km of arterial and none-arterial roads except for roads in rural areas, 35 percent are in good condition, 30 percent are a little damaged and 11 percent are in severe conditions,” he concluded.

He said that in order to carry out maintenance operations for 36,000 kilometers of arterial roads in the country, 120 trillion rials is needed annually. 

In the most optimistic case, credits and allocations will provide about 35 percent of the required fund, so maintaining roads have been prioritized in order to optimize the costs, in this regard, transit corridors are the top priority, according to the official.

Earlier this month, Iran’s deputy transport minister for resource planning and management said the county needs over 1.8 quadrillion rials (about $42.8 billion) of financial resources for completing its transportation infrastructure projects.

Speaking on the sidelines of the 4th International Exhibition of Transportation, Logistics, and Related Industries, Amir Mahmoud Ghaffari said: “In this regard, the Transport Development Fund has been established as the only specialized and financial institution in the field, for supporting the Transport Ministry’s infrastructure projects and the modernization of the transport fleet.”

In the past two decades, Iran’s transportation infrastructure has gone through major transformation and every year the country is advancing more in this area.

Currently, more than 80 percent of the country’s roads are paved and the government is also hugely planning on expanding and developing the country’s railway network.

EF/MA