Passengers wait to board Shanghai's high-speed train to Pudong airport, China. (Photo: AFP/VNA) Minhsaid the current infrastructure of the railway network was gettingolder and falling into a state of disrepair.
Thecapacity was very low compared to the current demand for freight andpassenger transport.
Therailway sector has not improved as the capacity of a single track was only 21pairs of trains per day.
Therailroads were not regularly maintained and the quality of the infrastructurewas severely degraded, he added.
Minhcited the Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City route as an example. Flying from Hanoi toHCM City takes around two hours in total while a high-speed traintravelling at 300 kph would take six hours.
Accordingto the Ministry of Transport’s draft railway planning for the 2021-2030period, the railway sector aims to meet the transport needs of 16.5 million tonnesof cargo and 30.9 million passengers by 2030.
Thesenumbers would increase by 15 percent and 19 percent respectively by 2050.
Toachieve this plan, the transport sector expected to get more than 665 trillionVND (28.9 million USD), of which investment for high-speed rail would account for561 trillion VND (24.3 million USD).
Theconsultant unit would calculate the investment for a high-speed railway, with aspeed of 350kph for two north-south routes of Hanoi-Vinh and HCM City-NhaTrang, with a length of 651km.
By2050, the transport sector would continue to invest in high-speed rail onthe Vinh-Nha Trang, Lao Cai-Hanoi-Hai Phong, Di An-Loc Ninh and ThapCham-Da Lat routes, and then would expand to other routes nationwide.
Minhsaid that the Government has assigned the Ministry of Transport and iscompleting a project to build a high-speed railway system to submit to theNational Assembly for approval.
Dueto huge investment, Director of the Department of Corporate Finance under theMinistry of Finance Dang Quyet Tien said the State's resources remainedlimited, so there was a need for different investment approaches.
“Choosingwhich route as a pilot must be calculated carefully. As for the capital source,once it is put into the public investment programme, there will be many ways tomobilise capital from the budget such as borrowing ODA capital or issuinggovernment bonds,” he said.
“Inthe short term, there may be limited resources, but in the future, theseprojects must be taken into account in order to base the motivation to mobiliseinvestment resources," he said.
High-speedrailway construction has always caused concerns and debate after it wasproposed in the first place more than ten years ago. Three high-speed routesare currently under study or have been proposed: north-south, HCM City-Can Thoand Hanoi-Lang Son./.
VNA
