Egypt has signed a $4.45 billion contract for the construction of a 660 km high-speed electric rail line that will link the Red Sea and Mediterranean coasts.
The contract which was signed between Egypt’s National Authority for Tunnels (NAT) and a consortium including Siemens Mobility, Orascom Construction (OC.DI) and Arab Contractors will cover the design, installation and maintenance stages of the rail link for over 15 years.
The link will include a main railway designed to carry more than 30 million passengers every year as well as a freight line, and will run between the Red Sea port of Ain Sokhna and the Mediterranean ports of Alexandria and Marsa Matrouh.
The consortium is projected to directly create more than 15,000 jobs in Egypt, with an additional 3,800 at Egyptian suppliers and indirectly through the wider Egyptian economy.
The Egyptian government is investing heavily to build the 1,800km high-speed rail network to transport people and goods across the country and reboot its infrastructure sector.
The project will also help promote tourism through a fast, modern, and safe means of transportation characterised by the highest levels of efficiency and safety to meet the needs and expectations of all Egyptians across the country, which is considered a major leap in the field of rail transport.
Egypt has an extensive rail network but it has suffered from decades of underinvestment and has been plagued by accidents.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Egypt was one of the few emerging market countries that experienced a positive growth rate in 2020.
The country expects real gross domestic product growth to increase by 5.2 per cent in the 2021-2022 fiscal year, up from 2.8 per cent in the previous fiscal year.
