ISTANBUL, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Türkiye and the World Bank have signed a 1.67-billion-euro (1.81-billion-U.S. dollar) financing agreement for the Istanbul Northern Railway Crossing Project, state broadcaster TRT reported Wednesday.

The agreement was signed at the World Bank headquarters in Washington on Tuesday by Turkish Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek and World Bank Managing Director for Operations Anna Bjerde. The project, with a total investment of 8.1 billion dollars, is about 83 percent financed by international financial institutions.

The project aims to address a key bottleneck in the Middle Corridor, a trade route linking Beijing and London, by integrating a 125-km electrified railway line via the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge over the Bosphorus Strait. Simsek said the project will raise the Bosphorus rail freight capacity from 3 million tons to 50 million tons annually.

He said the initiative will ease one of the most critical logistical constraints along the Middle Corridor. By providing a high-capacity rail link across the Bosphorus, the corridor is expected to become more reliable and its strategic role in global trade more pronounced.

The initiative is the third-largest ever approved by the World Bank, the minister said.

Bjerde described the corridor as "transformative," saying it would strengthen connectivity across three key routes: the Middle Corridor, the Iraq-linked Development Road, and the Türkiye-Europe Corridor.

Once completed, the project is expected to generate higher-income employment for more than 400,000 people. ■