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The Government of Thailand expects its part of a fast railway that will connect it via Laos with the end of the decade, despite the slow progress since construction began in 2017.
The construction of the first phase of the line connecting the province of Bangkok and the province of Nakhon Ratchasima is currently approximately 36 percent complete, said government spokesperson Jirayu Houngsub yesterday in a statement, the Bangkok Post reported.
The design for the second phase that will expand the railway to Nong Khai on the border with Laos has been completed and is ready to be presented to the cabinet for approval, Jirayu said. He added that the first phase is on its way for completion by 2027 and the entire line of 609 kilometers by 2030.
Jiraya added that the completion of the railway line is estimated To cost 434 billion baht ($ 12.9 billion), will be “An opportunity for Thailand to connect to the global economy” and underlines the status as a regional logistics hub.
The proposed rail connection will run Bangkok to the Nong Khai on the border with Laos, where it will connect to the China-Laos Railway, a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which started at the end of 2021, it will be completed, it will Possibly to travel by train from Bangkok to Kunming, the capital of the Chinese province of Yunnan, and from there to the rest of China via the extensive high-speed rail network of the country.
Discussions about the high-speed line of Thailand started almost two decades ago and the project was formally started in 2014. The construction then started in December 2017 at the Bangkok-Nakhon Ratchasima-stage of the project. However, progress has been slow due to disagreements about cost and loan conditions, the COVID-19 Pandemie and challenges with regard to land development rights. Last month, the board of the Staatsspoorweg of Thailand approved the extension From contracts for three segments of the railway line with a maximum of two years, with reference to difficulties of expropriation of land and the relocation of oil pipelines along the route.
The slow progress has reportedly been a subject of frustration in Beijing. During a visit to Bangkok in January last year, the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi China and Thailand called on to accelerate the construction of the railway line and “open the central line of the Trans-Asian railway”. Just like other planned high-speed rail lines that connect the province of Yunnan with Myanmar and Vietnam, the line is intended by Thailand and Laos to deepen the economic integration between mainland Southeast Asia and South China, traditionally braked by The rugged and heavily wooded terrain.
Since the arrest in 2023, the government guided by PHEU Thai has promised to accelerate The completion of the railway project, which fits with its goals to attract more trade and tourism from China and position itself as the ‘Logistics Hub of Asia’.
Spokesman Jirayu said yesterday with the press that Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinatra ordered the expedition of the high -speed project, together with individual projects to double the trail of some of the existing railway lines of Thailand and to build a “land bridge” over the Isthmus of Kra in the South of the country.
Given the repeated postponement that the first eight years of the construction of the project attended – the Thai government asked the project at the end of 2023 completed by 2028 – It is good to consider the 2030 deadline with a degree of skepticism, even if the railway line is eventually built.