International Construction Review (UK)
Cambodia is to restore rail links with Thailand destroyed during the 10-year war that ravaged the country and left behind a deadly legacy of anti-personnel mines and other unexploded ordnance.
There are also many years of neglect to make good. The rebuild will be a $70 million project for rehabilitating the country’s rail network as part of the Greater Mekong Sub-region’s economic development program.
Cambodia has some 600 km of railway track and associated bridges. Reinstating 48 missing kilometres up to the Thai frontier will allow the two countries to re-establish rail traffic between them. The project will also improve rail connections with the country’s ports at Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh.
The intention is to privatise railway operations when this sector of the national transportation system has been restructured under a public private partnership arrangement.
Faced with deteriorating railway services and lacking the resources to turn the railway around on its own, the government asked the Asian Development Bank to prepare a comprehensive project for restructuring the railway as a self-sustaining provider of transport services.
Peter Broch, ADB’s mission leader for the project, said that the railway in Cambodia forms a strategic part of the sub-region’s southern transport corridor.
“Restoring it will pave the way for construction of a new line between Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Min City in Viet Nam. This would… further strengthen regional cooperation among Cambodia, Thailand and Viet Nam.”
As in other South East Asian countries, efficient railways would offer a safe and cost effective alternative to trucking for heavy and hazardous cargoes such as cement, containers and hydrocarbon fuels.
The development bank is making a $42 million loan to the country, co-financed to the extent of $13 million from the OPEC Fund for International Development. The remainder of around $15 million is being contributed by the Cambodian Government but Malaysia has offered to provide as a grant in kind the rails required to rebuild the 48 km north-west towards Thailand.
The terms of the loans are favourable to a country endeavouring to restore its infrastructure: annual interest on the 32-year ADB loan totalling $55 million including the OPEC contribution will run at one per cent for the first eight years and at 1½ per cent thereafter.
The Cambodian Ministry of Public Works and Transport is the executing agency for the project, due for completion in 2009.
There are also many years of neglect to make good. The rebuild will be a $70 million project for rehabilitating the country’s rail network as part of the Greater Mekong Sub-region’s economic development program.
Cambodia has some 600 km of railway track and associated bridges. Reinstating 48 missing kilometres up to the Thai frontier will allow the two countries to re-establish rail traffic between them. The project will also improve rail connections with the country’s ports at Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh.
The intention is to privatise railway operations when this sector of the national transportation system has been restructured under a public private partnership arrangement.
Faced with deteriorating railway services and lacking the resources to turn the railway around on its own, the government asked the Asian Development Bank to prepare a comprehensive project for restructuring the railway as a self-sustaining provider of transport services.
Peter Broch, ADB’s mission leader for the project, said that the railway in Cambodia forms a strategic part of the sub-region’s southern transport corridor.
“Restoring it will pave the way for construction of a new line between Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Min City in Viet Nam. This would… further strengthen regional cooperation among Cambodia, Thailand and Viet Nam.”
As in other South East Asian countries, efficient railways would offer a safe and cost effective alternative to trucking for heavy and hazardous cargoes such as cement, containers and hydrocarbon fuels.
The development bank is making a $42 million loan to the country, co-financed to the extent of $13 million from the OPEC Fund for International Development. The remainder of around $15 million is being contributed by the Cambodian Government but Malaysia has offered to provide as a grant in kind the rails required to rebuild the 48 km north-west towards Thailand.
The terms of the loans are favourable to a country endeavouring to restore its infrastructure: annual interest on the 32-year ADB loan totalling $55 million including the OPEC contribution will run at one per cent for the first eight years and at 1½ per cent thereafter.
The Cambodian Ministry of Public Works and Transport is the executing agency for the project, due for completion in 2009.
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