DOHA: Qatar said yesterday falling oil prices wouldn’t affect its ambitious rail projects and the country will be fully ready to join a GCC-wide rail network by 2018.
The three massive rail projects — Long Distance, Doha Metro and Lusail Light Rail — will together cost an astronomical QR130bn ($35.7bn), officials said.
They, however, didn’t give the breakup of costs for the above three projects. Tenders would likely be floated for the Long Distance rail project (that will be linked to the GCC rail network) in the second half of this year.
Work on the (Long Distance) project is expected to begin next year, Qatar Railway Company officials told reporters here yesterday on the sidelines of an event.
According to the officials, the GCC secretariat-general is quite keen to ensure that the regional rail project is ready within the agreed deadline.
The Managing Director of Qatar Rail, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Subei, and the director of Long Distance Rail Network, Abdulrahman Al Malki, spoke to reporters.
Both passenger and freight rail networks will be developed as part of the regional rail system and Doha will be directly linked to Saudi Arabia.
The city will also be linked to Manama directly but only passenger trains will ply between Doha and Bahrain.
Doha will also be linked to Dukhan and Al Shamal as also Messaieed, the hub of Qatar’s downstream industries, and Ras Laffan, the centre of upstream industries, will be linked to each other through both passenger and freight lines, the officials said.
Asked that Qatar was lagging behind while Saudi Arabia had gone much ahead in launching the GCC rail project, the officials said Saudi Arabia is a big country so it has been working on the project for quite some time.
The Peninsula
