SE Asia to seek US$2b for transnational railway
MANILA - Southeast Asian nations will seek to raise US$2 billion
later this year to complete a railway system that will eventually
stretch from China to Singapore and link eight countries in the
region.
The Singapore-Kunming Rail Link working group will hold an
investors' seminar later this year, possibly in Kuala Lumpur, to
raise the funds, said Ong Keng Yong, the secretary-general of the
Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean).
'Financing has not been easy because there has been so much
resistance to using rail as a means of communication,' Mr Ong told
reporters in Manila after a meeting of the Asean Mekong Basin
Development Cooperation group.
'Everybody now uses low budget airlines. But at the end of the day
it (rail) is still the cheapest way of transporting many of our
goods across borders.'
'More importantly our leadership feels that the railway will
facilitate greater travel and people-to-people contact. It will
contribute to a freer flow of people across borders.'
The rail system is slated for completion by 2015, when Asean will
convert itself into an EU-style economic community.
The region also hopes to have a free trade agreement with China
fully in place by 2010.
The entire system, which builds on existing rail links within
nations, is likely to cost US$10 billion. China has said it will
invest about US$6.4 billion in the project by 2010.
The railway will link Kunming, the capital of the southern Chinese
province of Yunnan, to Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh,
Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and then Singapore.
Separate lines will link Laos to Vietnam, and Myanmar to
China.
The 5,000-km Singapore-Kunming link was originally proposed in 1995
but has been slow to get off the ground.
Mr Ong said the 'missing links' were from Ho Chi Minh City in
Vietnam to Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital; and from the Thai
border to the Cambodian town of Sisophon.
A rail link would also be built from Laos to central Vietnam, to
link with the Singapore-Kunming line.
Asean comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. --
REUTERS
