Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: The contract to build Egypt’s first high-speed rail link has been awarded to the French company NGE as per an announcement the European firm Thursday. The railroad is a 330km section that connects the Red Sea and Mediterranean coasts.
The link will construct the first section of a 660km line that will extend westwards along the coast on the Mediterranean Sea to Marsa Matrouh and towards the border with Libya, according to AFP reports.
In its statement, NGE said it would take around 19 months to complete construction of the section between Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea coast and Borg El Arab near Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast via the New Administrative Capital (NAC), which is just east of Cairo.
For intercity transport, Egypt’s population of over 104 million people, relies heavily on the railways, however, the current network has been plagued by sometimes deadly accidents which are usually blamed on ageing infrastructure.
In September 2021, Egypt inked a $4.45-billion contract with a consortium of German and Egyptian companies, led by Orascom, Arab Contractors, and Siemens to implement, design, and maintain the line between Marsa Matrouh and Ain Sokhna.
It is one of numerous key construction projects announced by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi since he assumed power in 2014.
NGE already working to expand Cairo’s metro
The French firm NGE is already, in cooperation with other companies, working on expanding and refurbishing Cairo’s metro, a megacity of over 20 million people.
Sisi has also championed blueprints for the much-delayed New Administrative Capital, a project designed to relieve Cairo’s long-term congestion.
In 2019, Canada’s manufacturing group Bombardier announced it had inked a multi-billion-dollar agreement to build 2 automated monorail lines linking Greater Cairo with the NAC.
