Proposed HCMC-Can Tho railway may cost $9 bln

The total cost to build a modern railway of more than 174 km linking Ho Chi Minh City with Can Tho City, the Mekong Delta’s hub, has been estimated at $9 billion, according to Vietnam’s Railway Project Management Board.

The estimation is part of the board’s report submitted to the Ministry of Transport on a survey and preparation for a pre-feasibility study of the mammoth railway project. The board said it had worked with authorities in the six provinces and cities the project would go through - HCMC, Binh Duong, Long An, Tien Giang, Vinh Long, and Can Tho.

At present, Vietnam’s North-South national railway ends in HCMC and the Mekong Delta region does not have access to railroads. The national Hanoi-HCMC railway uses a track gauge of about one meter which has been in use for more than 100 years. Therefore, there are no high-speed trains and the system is a single-track network.

Meanwhile, the proposed HCMC-Can Tho railway would be a high-speed route, using an international track gauge of 1,435 millimeters. The proposal says the project, being double-track instead of single-track, would operate both passenger and freight trains, with 15 stations and 11 maintenance and repair stations on the route.

For passenger trains, the designed maximum speed is 190km/h but the real speed would be below that. Meanwhile, freight trains would run below 120km/h.

The proposal says the project, in terms of investment, would undergo a public-private partnership (PPP) form. Accordingly, the government would pay for site clearance, and private investors would mobilize capital for construction, trial runs, and delivery to the government via a build-transfer-lease (BTL) contract. The private investors would lease the railway to the project operator in 30 years.

According to the Railway Project Management Board, the costing is just an estimate, which may see further updates or adjustments during later stages.

The Ministry of Transport expects that all preparatory work for the huge project will be completed before 2025, with construction to begin before 2030.