The six Gulf countries have agreed in principle to push back the completion date of a 2,100 kilometre transnational rail network stretching from Kuwait to Oman by three years to 2021, Abdullah Belhaif Al Nuaimi, the United Arab Emirates’ Minister for Infrastructure said on September 28.
Ministers from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE met in Riyadh in April to discuss a more plausible deadline to connect the six states by rail after the original 2018 deadline was seen to be unrealistic.
“In principle we agreed on 2021 as a ceiling,” Abdullah Belhaif Al Nuaimi, the UAE minister, said. GCC ministers will meet again “later this year” where it is hoped the six states will give a firm commitment to a new deadline date, Al Nuaimi said. “Some countries might link before then (2021) [and] some of them might even need a higher ceiling.”
The regional rail link is seen as a major political and economic initiative to bring the six Gulf states even closer.
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