GUANGZHOU: South China's Guangdong Province is seeking foreign financial support to start construction this year of a high-speed railway to link Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, to the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone.

According to Yang Tusheng, general manager of Guangdong Railway Group Corp, his group is now talking with companies from the United States, Germany, France and Japan to import technologies and equipment for the gigantic project.

But the effort will not use the expensive magnetic levitation option to save on construction costs of up to 15 billion yuan (US$1.81 billion), Yang said.

Construction of the 139.8-kilometre railway will begin in the second half of the year and cost more than 20.8 billion yuan (US$2.51 billion).

Yang said overseas investment is expected to play a big part in the project which will extend to Macao in the future.

Completion is set for 2007, Yang said.

The link would allow rolling stock to hit 170 kilometres an hour, starting from Dashi Township in Guangzhou's Panyu District. The track would end in Gongbei in Zhuhai.

The current two-hour journey from Zhuhai to Guangzhou would be cut to 40 minutes.

Fourteen stations would link major cities and towns in the western part of the prosperous Pearl River Delta.

In addition to Guangzhou and Zhuhai, cities such as Zhongshan, Jiangmen, Xinhui and Foshan will benefit when traffic starts.

A pair of passenger trains will operate between Guangzhou and Zhuhai every eight minutes, with passengers paying 50 yuan (US$6), the current coach fare.

The line will have capacity to transport more than 250,000 passengers a day by 2011 and 775,000 in 2033. It likely will strengthen economic ties between the west Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong and Macao.

It will connect Guangzhou Metro Line 3 now under construction with the railway.

"The room for offshore business representatives to invest in Guangdong's railway industry is actually huge," Yang said.

The project is part of the Guangdong government's push to build a faster rail network in the delta area in the coming years, Yang said.

Guangdong Province has decided to invest more than 108 billion yuan (US$13 billion) for construction of a high speed railway network, linking Guangzhou to major cities in the delta bordering Hong Kong and Macao.

And 59.5 billion yuan (US$7.17 billion) will be invested before 2010 to build tracks totalling more than 330 kilometres.

Nine new cross city rail lines that will reach more than 930 kilometres will be laid out in the prosperous province before 2020.

In addition to the Guangzhou-Zhuhai railway project other high speed projects between Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Dongguan in the eastern part of the Pearl River Delta will start before 2010.

The projects in the prosperous region will provide myriad investment opportunities to offshore investors, Yang said.

The Guangdong provincial government has focused fund-raising efforts on capital markets.

In addition to government investment and bank loans, overseas companies and financial groups are being asked to invest in construction and management in the province's rail projects.

Foreign companies are being sought as suppliers of equipment and technology and as bidders for designs, Yang said.

Last year, construction of Guangzhou-Foshan Railway began.

The 22-kilometre-long link cost more than 3.4 billion yuan (US$409 million) and should be completed in three years

The high-speed network will help Guangdong expand ties outward.

Guangdong Province is also planning to build two new railways, connecting Guangzhou with Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province and Hong Kong respectively.

The planned Guangzhou-Wuhan project has been designed to reach between 250 kilometres and 300 kilometres an hour.

The 971-kilometre railway line is 113 kilometres shorter than the current Guangzhou-Wuhan Section of the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway Line.

If approved by the central government, the project will begin before the end of 2005.

It is expected to take about four hours for passenger trains to complete the journey between Guangzhou and Wuhan on the new line. Currently it takes 10 hours plus 30 minutes for such a train ride.

Meanwhile Guangzhou and Shenzhen Special Economic Zones are also seeking foreign financial support in building their subway lines.

Guangzhou which has now two subway lines in operation is planning to form an advanced metro network of at least seven subway lines before 2010.

The total length of Guangzhou's metro network is expected to reach more than 600 kilometres.

Shenzhen Special Economic Zone is now constructing two metro projects, linking the city's Luohu and Huanggang frontier checkpoints to Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport.

(Business Weekly 03/16/2004 page1)