Regional rail connection on track as Cambodia re-opens railway

22 Oct, 2010
Source: Earth Times

Phnom Penh - Cambodia officially reopened its first section of rehabilitated railway on Friday, the initial step towards closing the gap in a regional rail connection linking Singapore to the city of Kunming in China.

Speaking at the opening at Phnom Penh's central railway station, Minister of Finance Keat Chhon said rehabilitating the country's railways, devastated after decades of conflict, also marked an important step in the drive to boost the economy.

"This will improve and develop Cambodia's economy by integrating it better with the region and the world, and will ensure greater competitiveness in transportation within Cambodia and outside," Keat Chhon said.

He added that shifting goods on to the rail network would improve road safety, and would help to conserve road infrastructure. Most goods in Cambodia currently move by road.

The 110-kilometre section that opened Friday runs south from Phnom Penh to the town of Touk Meas. Once it is completed in 2011, the full southern line, which is 250 kilometres long, will link the capital with the port of Sihanoukville.

Reconstruction of the northern line, which runs 390 kilometres north-west from Phnom Penh to the Poipet border crossing into Thailand, is scheduled to finish in 2012.

Once that is completed, the final link in the Singapore-Kunming chain will be the railway between Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam.

"The government is giving priority to that project - to build to Ho Chi Minh City," Keat Chhon said.

The railway rehabilitation project is expected to cost 141.6 million dollars, more than half funded by an 84-million-dollar loan from the Asian Development Bank.

The Australian government provided a further 21.5-million-dollar grant, and Phnom Penh financed most of the rest.

Cambodia's railway will be operated as a 30-year concession by Toll Royal Railway, a subsidiary of Australian firm Toll Holdings and its local partner, in a deal signed last year.

Toll's focus is freight services, and it remains unclear whether passenger services will be restarted once the rehabilitation project is finished by 2013.