China Railway Corp, the spin-off from the now-defunct Chinese Ministry of Railways, suffered an after-tax loss of 6.88 billion yuan (HK$8.7 billion) in the first quarter, compared with an after-tax profit of 196 million yuan for the whole of 2012, according to its first bond prospectus. Revenue amounted to 236.21 billion yuan in the first quarter, compared with 963.25 billion yuan for the whole of last year.

 

For its bond issue, the state-owned firm plans to issue 20 billion yuan of five-year bonds to finance rail construction, the purchase of rolling stock and for general working capital.

 

The company, established on March 14 with a registered capital of 1.04 trillion yuan, assumed the business operations of the Ministry of Railways after it was broken up.

 

"If the company sustains losses in the long term, it will be difficult for them to borrow, but if people think the government will continue to support the company, it can still get debt financing," said Ivan Chung of Moody's Investors Service, an international credit rating agency.

 

"In the past, people saw it as part of the government, so people did not care about the financial numbers, but now they care about the financial statement and profit and losses.

 

"Now it's no longer the Ministry of Railways, it's a new company. So is it still able to borrow at low cost as the Ministry of Railways had done, or will the market perceive it as risky so that its borrowing costs will go up?

 

"Now the company is testing the market to see if it can get financing from the market. What's interesting is how the market will respond to the bond issue and what the interest rate will be."

 

For this year, China Railway has budgeted fixed-asset investment of 650 billion yuan, more than the nation's fixed-asset investment in railway of 634 billion yuan last year, said its bond prospectus.

 

The fixed-asset investment of 650 billion yuan includes 520 billion yuan of rail construction spending. Some 5,200km of railway will be built this year, said the prospectus.

 

The company's gearing ratio rose from 57 per cent at the end of 2010 to 62 per cent on March 31. Its debt totalled 2.84 trillion yuan on March 31.

 

 

 

 

 

QATAR Rail has signed a design-build contract with a consortium led by Impregilo, Italy, for the Red Line North section of the Doha metro network.

 

The contract covers the construction of the 13km stretch of the Red Line from Mushaireb to Education City, which will have seven stations. The line will run in two parallel tunnels, each with an internal diameter of 6.17m.

 

Impregilo has a 41.25% share in the consortium, which also includes SK Engineering & Construction and Galfar Engineering & Construction.

 

Impregilo says the contract is worth €1.7bn, which includes €630m for planning and civil works and €1.1bn for preparatory works, electrical and mechanical systems, and architectural works at the five intermediate stations.

 

The stations at Mushaireb and Education City will be constructed by a consortium led by Yapi Merkezi, Turkey under a separate contract. Jacobs Engineering, United States, has been appointed as engineering manager for the project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

China’s dubious intentions were revealed yet again when reports claimed that it is building road and railway lines in Indian territory.

 

According to a Times Now report China is building rail lines near the Burtse Post area.

 

Members in the Lok Sabhaon Monday voiced concern over intrusion by Chinese troops in Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, with crucial UPA ally Samajwadi Party objecting to the upcoming visit of External Minister Salman Khurshid to Beijing.

 

Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav took the lead in targeting the Government for “doing nothing” and alleged that it was acting in a “cowardly” manner in dealing with the intrusion.

 

Describing China as the “biggest enemy”, the former Defence Minister said during Zero Hour, “We have been warning that China has started occupying our territory. But Government is not listening to all this.”

 

He said the Indian Army has said it is ready to remove all intruders but there is no action.

 

“This Government is cowardly, incompetent and good for nothing,” he said, while objecting to the upcoming visit of Khurshid to China.

 

Amid continuous slogan-shouting by BJP members in the Well over coal issue, Yadav said he had raised the issue several times with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defence Minister AK Antony, but to no avail. “I went to his (PM’s) chamber to talk to him. But no action was taken.”

 

Claiming that one lakh square km of Indian territory has been “occupied” by China, he accused the Government of “doing nothing”.

 

“When the Army Chief himself says the troops are ready to respond, why is the Government not issuing instructions to it? They (China) insulted us in 1962. They are insulting us now in the world fora,” Yadav said.

 

He was supported by B Mahtab (BJD) and Sudip Bandyopadhyay (TMC), who demanded a statement from the Prime Minister on the incursion on April 16 by Chinese troops who have pitched tents 19 km inside Indian territory in Daulat Beg Oldie area.

 

Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid refused to acknowledge any incursion from Chinese side.

 

BJYM, the youth wing of BJP in Jammu protested against the Chinese incursion in Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) sector in eastern Ladakh and also blamed Centre’s wrong policies for the incident.

 

The Government recently admitted that soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army have intruded and pitched their tents 19 km into Indian territory in Jammu and Kashmir. Earlier, it was believed they had intruded 1o km into Indian territory. China appears to be adamant not to pull its soldiers back to the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control.

 

Defence Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma and some other senior officials informed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence that India has deployed forces to “keep a close watch on the border”, sources said.

 

Sharma and other officials appeared before the Committee after BJP members Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Prakash Javadekar wanted to know the actual ground situation in Depsang sector of Ladakh where the Chinese incursion took place in Daulat Beg Oldie area a week ago.

 

The meeting of the committee was cut short as members were dissatisfied with the insufficient information provided by the officials and they were asked to report back at the next meeting on May 30 with appropriate and exact details of the situation.

 

The officials told the Committee that Indian Army patrols reported on April 16 the presence of Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Depsang, pitching tents 19 km inside the LAC, the sources said.

 

 

  

 

Work on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway construction is maintained in accordance with the planned schedule, head of Azerbaijan Railways JSC Arif Askerov said on Thursday, commenting on the suspension of work under this project.

 

According to him, the Azerbaijani side adopted a budget for financing the work throughout 2013 and all work is carried out in accordance with a prearranged schedule.

 

The transport corridor includes the construction of the Kars-Akhalkalaki branch line with a length of 98km of which 68km lies in Turkey and 30km in Georgia.

 

A 183 kilometre section of the Akhalkalaki-Marabda-Tbilisi railway will be reconstructed as part of the project to increase the capacity to 15 million tons of cargo per year. It is planned to construct a centre in Akhalkalaki to transfer trains from the existing Georgian track to the European one.

 

Azerbaijan has allocated a soft loan worth $775 million for Georgia to construct and reconstruct the Georgian section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway.

 

Tranche A worth $200 million has been allocated for 25 years at one per cent per annum and includes the work on the project since 2007. Tranche B worth $575 million is for 25 years at five per cent per annum.

 

The need for allocating Tranche B is associated with an increase in world prices on the construction and raw materials, revaluation of the current state of the Marabda-Kartsakhi railway branch and operations in adverse weather conditions.

 

It is expected that about 30 million tons of cargo per year will be transported through the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway annually. It will become a direct route to the European rail network.

 

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway will increase the flow of containers, bulk and other types of cargo from Asia to Europe. The Marmaris project envisaging the construction of a tunnel under the Bosporus will be implemented during this period. This will open a rail link to Europe.

 

 

 

 

The latest addition to the metro network in the Chinese city of Chengdu was inaugurated on June 8 with the launch of commercial services on the 8.7km western extension of Line 2 from Chandianzi Bus Station to Xipu.

 

The extension has six stations and the journey time between Xipu and the interchange with Line 1 at Tianfu Square in the city centre is 35 minutes.

 

The new Ocean Park station at the southern end of Line 1 also opened on June 8.

 

 

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Paul Bigland FOLLOWING an international tender, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) has issued a provisional notification of contract award to a consortium of Sojitz, Japan, and Larsen & Toubro, India, for Packages 1 and 2 of the Rewari – Iqbalgarh section of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor.

 

The contracts are worth a total of Rs 67bn ($US 1.15bn) and cover all civil works and trackwork on the 626km section of the route.

 

Tendering is also underway for Package 3, which covers civil construction and trackwork on the remaining 296km section of Phase 1 between Iqbalgarh – Vadodara, together with the contracts for special bridges, electrical works, and signalling and telecommunications. Bids will also be invited soon for Package 7, covering rolling stock and maintenance facilities.

 

 

 

The Peoples Committee of Ho Chi Minh City signed a contract with Hitachi on June 11 for Metro Line 1 Package 3, which covers electrical and mechanical works, trackwork, and rolling stock for the first phase of the city's metro network.

 

The total value of the contract is around Yen 37bn ($US 384m) and includes the delivery 17 three-car trains, signalling systems, telecommunications (including wireless train radio), power supplies, platform screen doors, automatic fare collection, and depot facilities.

 

Under a separate agreement, Hitachi will also provide maintenance services for five years from the start of commercial operations, which are expected to begin in 2019.

 

Line 1 will run for 19.6km from Ben Thanh Market to Suoi Tien, with a 2.2km underground section between Ben Thanh and Ba Son Shipyard. Construction began last year on the 17km elevated section, which is being built by a consortium of Sumitomo and Vietnamese partner Cienco. The contract to construct the underground section is currently being tendered.

 

The president of Russian Railways (RZD), Mr Vladimir Yakunin, has pledged that the Russian rail network will continue to be vertically integrated for at least another two years.

 

"The target model of railfreight in Russia provides for the continuing integration of rail transport infrastructure and transport activities until at least 2015," Yakunin told delegates at the opening session of the eighth International Rail Business Forum: 1520 Strategic Partnership conference, being held in Krasnaya Polyana, the location for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

 

"Nevertheless, this issue is important to us both as giving the context for discussing possible models for competition in transport activities by establishing local carriers, and in view of the need for the state to adopt a long-term model of the national railway company before any steps are taken ahead of the possible privatisation of shares in Russian Railways," Yakunin explained. "We think it is extremely important to have a broad public discussion of these issues in order to help the government develop a correct idea about the model for rail operations."

 

A joint study by A T Kearney and Russia's Institute of Natural Monopolies Research (IPEM) says that the appearance of local carriers on 17 routes will reduce RZD's railfreight revenues by 3.5% and cut earnings by 28%, forcing RZD to increase tariffs by 2.1%.

 

RZD has already moved a long way towards the separation of operations from infrastructure by setting up railfreight subsidiaries and selling shares in them, although it has retained ownership of the locomotives in order to maintain control of train operations. A long-distance passenger operator, together with several commuter rail operators, have also been set up, but as subsidiaries of RZD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just six months after taking the job, India's railways minister Mr Pawan Bansal resigned on Friday amidst a bribery and corruption scandal brought about by the arrest of his nephew Mr Vijay Singla and Indian Railway board member, staff, Mr Mahesh Kumar on May 3.

 

Singla, and seven accomplices who have now been arrested, are accused of selling the political favours necessary to secure prominent jobs in the railway industry following a surveillance investigation by India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). A preliminary CBI report states that up to eight positions have been sold, including the position of board member electrical to Kumar for around Rs 100m ($US 1.82m).

 

Kumar, who was appointed board member staff on May 2, is thought to have paid Rs 20m to acquire the coveted position of general manager (west) and signals and telecoms for Indian Railways while holding the board member, staff position, an appointment that would require the blessing of the railways minister.

 

In addition he is thought to have agreed to pay Rs 100m to become the next board member electrical where he would be responsible for granting electrical rolling stock and infrastructure contracts, Rs 50m of which would be payable in advance and Rs 50m when he assumed the position in July. The CBI is also said to be investigating whether Kumar's appointment as board member staff was legitimate.

 

Singla and middleman Mr Sandeep Goyal are also thought to have facilitated the appointment of Mr Dayal Arya as head of material management functions at Chittaranjan Locomotive Works and Mr Narrotam Das as chief electrical engineer at the Karpurthala Coach Factory. Das' appointment on December 17 2012 was preceded by 16 phone calls between him and Singla, and four to Bansal's private secretary, Mr Rahul Bhandain.

 

According to The Hindustan Times, the CBI initiated the investigation of bribery at the ministry following a tip-off from Kumar intended to throw the agency off course.

 

Surveillance of around 1000 phone calls, many of which were to Bansal's official residence, appear to implicate Singla, Goya and Kumar in the case, while Singla was found to be frequently present at the railway minister's residence and Indian Railways' Rail Bhavan headquarters during the investigation. Kumar is also reported to have met Bansal at a function in Mumbai just two weeks before he acquired the role of board member staff.

 

Singla, a director of eight prominent businesses, was arrested while reportedly receiving a payment of Rs 900,000 relating to Kumar's appointment in Chandigarh on May 3. Local media, citing Congressional sources, state that Singla has been close to his uncle throughout his political rise and would often facilitate meetings between Bansal and business leaders.

 

The CBI is also conducting an internal investigation of whether an insider tipped off Kumar's wife about a raid on their property on May 3 following his arrest at Mumbai airport. She was found to have moved jewellery and other items to the residence of a Railway Protection Force officer after a bag was discovered at the home of the officer's friend on May 6.

 

Bansal's resignation was accepted by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh during a meeting in Delhi, and according to media reports, he is expected to be questioned over his knowledge and involvement in the scandal by Tuesday. He has pleaded his innocence since resigning and welcomed the CBI's investigation.

 

"I have given my statement on the first day itself and I have nothing to do with this incident," Bansal said. "I have welcomed the investigation by the CBI in the matter."

 

 

 

 

 

 

A ceremony was held at the headquarters of Mass Rapid Transit Jakarta on June 11 to mark the signing if the first three civil works contracts for the initial 15.2km phase of the city's metro network.

 

Two bidders have been selected to build the 9.2km underground section of the route. A consortium of Shimuzu, Obayashi, Wijaya Karya, and Jaya Construction will be responsible for two packages and a joint venture of Sumitomo Mitsui Construction and Hutama Karya won the third contract.

 

MRT Jakarta managing director Mr Dono Boestami confirmed during the event that Oriental Consultants, Japan, has been awarded a contract to provide construction management services for the project. He also said that tendering had been completed on the three civil works packages for the elevated section of the line, and the winning bidders will be announced soon. The two remaining contracts, which cover railway systems and rolling stock, are still being tendered.

 

Speaking at the ceremony, Jakarta governor Mr Joko Widodo said he expects the contractors to begin major construction work by October.

 

The first phase is due to open in 2017 and will link to the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle with Lebak Bulus in southern Jakarta. The line will have six underground and seven elevated stations. Services will initially operate at five-minute headways and ridership is expected to reach 420,000 passengers per day after three years of operation.

 

 

 

 

 

A team of Japanese consultants has completed a feasibility study for the proposed $US 1.7bn reconstruction of the 640km metre-gauge line between Myanmar's largest city Yangon and the northern city of Mandalay.

 

According to local media reports, the government plans to award the contract to Japanese companies because the study has been funded by the Japanese government, which is also expected to provide loans for the project.

 

Meanwhile deputy railway minister Mr Thura Thuang Lwin has confirmed that an unnamed Chinese supplier will establish assembly plants for the production of diesel locomotives and rolling stock in Myanmar by the end of 2015. The facilities will require an investment of around $100m, around 90% of which will be funded through loans from China.

 

Myanmar Railways' current roster includes 281 diesel locomotives, 50 dmu cars, 827 coaches and 2969 wagons, although much of the fleet is life-expired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MTR Shenzhen, the operator of Shenzhen Metro Line 4, has awarded Nanjing SR Puzhen Rail Transport (NPRT) a Yuan 420m ($US 67.74m) contract to supply 56 metro cars which will be delivered in 2013-14.

 

Nanjing SR Puzhen Rail Transport is a joint venture between CSR, which holds a 67.5% stake, and Singapore-based aluminium alloy extrusion manufacturer, Midas Holdings which holds 32.5%.

 

Midas CEO Mr Patrick Chew says "the order momentum for NPRT is very encouraging" after the company secured its third order in 2013 which takes the cumulative total to Yuan 1.4bn.

 

In February NPRT secured a Yuan 710m contract from Nanjing Metro for 26 four-car trains for Nanjing Metro Line 11, a 45km line with 17 stations which is due to open ahead of the 2014 Youth Olympic Games which will be held in the city. The trains will be delivered in 2014 and 2015. NPRT also won a Yuan 338m contract in January from Suzhou New District Tramway to supply 18 low-floor LRVs for operation on Suzhou National New & Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone Line 1. Delivery of these vehicles is set to take place in 2014.