It will take only five and a half hours to travel from Hanoi to HCM City by the North-South High Speed Railway once it is operational, instead of the current 30 hours.

The 1,570 km railway, estimated to cost of 38 billion USD, will enable trains to run at speeds of 30kph.

Speaking at a conference to analyse the feasibility of the project, held by the Vietnam Railways and Japan Overseas Rolling Stock Association on Sept. 15, Iwata Shizuo, head of the JICA study team for Vietnam ’s Transport System Sustainable Development Strategy (VITRANSS-II), said that the project would help reduce transportation costs by 57 percent.

However, with the huge investment, the project would be economically feasible if it was put into operation after 2036, when urban areas in provinces and cities along the railway line were better developed and had larger populations, he said.

To develop the project, Vietnam should boost urban development; work out legal frameworks such as high-speed railway laws and necessary technical standards; call for more investments from different sources and develop human resource, Shizuo suggested.

In terms of capital mobilisation, representatives from the Nomura Research Institute suggested that the project should be conducted under the Public-Private Partnership model to take advantage of the private sector’s capital.

Under the model, private capital could accounts for 5.75 percent of the total investment.
Deputy Minister of Transport Ngo Thinh Duc highly appreciated the active cooperation between Vietnamese and Japanese staff to prepare for the project.
The Government had asked the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Ministry of Finance to organise an investment promotion conference to call for more financial support from domestic and foreign investors, he said./.