In July, the Egyptian government will launch a series of railway infrastructure projects. This measure concerns the first of all the projects aimed to modernize the Egyptian National Railways (ENR). This includes the construction of 1,200 km of railway at an estimated cost of 5 billion Egyptian pounds (about USD 275.6 million). Funding for which the Egyptian authorities are currently discussing with the international financial institutions.
This project to modernize Egyptian national railways also includes the rehabilitation of infrastructures and the reinforcement of the maintenance capacities of the teams.
Minister of Transport, Hesham Arafat, said that his ministry is set to increase the maintenance fleet of the Egyptian National Railways, with investments of USD 4.3 million. He noted that the capabilities of ENR subsidiaries are not sufficient to implement maintenance tasks, as they are now only capable of operating on 10 km per month.
He explained that the ministry is currently enacting procedures to separate the transportation of goods and assign that activity to a joint stock company in cooperation with the private sector.
The authority is working to sign a contract to buy six diesel trains at a cost of USD 137.5 million, next to negotiating with international companies to provide 700 low-class carriages with 50% of its components being local. The ENR is also working on upgrading 60 out of 10,321 low-class carriages per month, as well as upgrading 60 middle-class carriages out of 1,223, along with 40 out of 650 AC class carriages. The authority also aims to develop 50 train stations per year with an allocated cost of EGP 150 million (USD 8.3 million).
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