ADB Provides Further Funds for Rail Link

By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
17 December 2009

The Asian Development Bank will provide $42 million in loans to the Cambodian government to help it revitalize its railway and boost a Southeast Asian trade network, officials said Wednesday.

“It’s a supplemental loan for the railroad,” said Kamayana Putu, ADB’s Cambodia director.

The bank has put a total investment of $84 million in the project, which is expected to cost at least $141 million.

The latest round of financing will make it possible for freight trains to begin running between Kampot province, near the Vietnamese border, to Phnom Penh, in 2011.

The entire rail system is expected to be functioning by 2013, with the eventual rehabilitation of 600 kilometers of rail all the way to Thailand, including segments damaged during Cambodia’s decades of civil strife.

The new funding will also go toward the development of a modern maintenance facility outside Phnom Penh.

“This upgraded rail network will position Cambodia as a true sub-regional transport hub, creating new jobs and business opportunities in the manufacturing and logistic services sectors,” Peter Broch, a transportation economist in the ADB’s Southeast Asia department, said in a statement.

Cambodian PM calls for help on ASEAN rail

Editor: Li Xianzhi

PHNOM PENH, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday called for other countries to provide assistance for the construction of the missing link in Cambodia of the ASEAN railroad which connects from Singapore to China.

"We need help from other countries to construct the missing link in Cambodia of the ASEAN railway," he announced in the workshop of Khmer Art performing at Chaktumok Theater hall in Phnom Penh.

"The ASEAN railway will also provide the huge benefit for other countries," he added. "Therefore we need the help for that project," he said, adding that so far only china has provided the assistance including research study of the project. "China alone will not be enough," he said.

Missing link is distance about the 225-kilometer between Phnom Penh and Loc Ninh, a provincial capital in southern Vietnam. ASEAN ministers have agreed to build a modern railway from Singapore through Thailand and ending in Kunming, China, which will enter Cambodia at Poipet and follow the existing line along the southern shore of the Tonle Sap lake into Phnom Penh.

Sun Chanthol, former Cambodian minister of public work and transport said in 2008 that Cambodia need about 500 million U.S. dollars to build and upgrade Cambodia's stretch of a proposed railway of the ASEAN and it depends on the price of materials. The proposed Trans-Asia Rail Link will be completed by 2015.

Railroad conditions across Cambodia have eroded greatly in the past 30 years so much money is needed for reconstruction and upgrade.