China Railway Group has won the bid for a high-speed railway project in Russia, marking the first overseas deal for Chinese high-speed rail.
The company said in an announcement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange late on Tuesday that a consortium led by its wholley-owned subsidiary China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group won the bid for a contract worth 20 billion rubles (2.4 billion yuan) for the Moscow-Kazan high-speed rail, pending a formal agreement expected to be signed this month.
The contract is for completing the construction project for the geotechnical investigation and surveying, area planning, preparation of plan on land investigation, and preparation of design documents for the 770 kms railway between Moscow and Kazan, part of a high-speed rail line that will extend to Yekaterinburg.
Upon completion of the railways with maximum design speed is 400km/h, travelling time between Moscow and Kazan will be shortened to 3.5 hours from the current 14 hours, China Railway Group said in the announcement.
Total estimated cost of the project is 1.068 trillion rubles (129.43 billion yuan) and it is expected to be completed before Russia hosts the 2018 FIFA World Cup, according to the same announcement.
Russia and China agreed to cooperate on building a high-speed railway connecting their capitals by signing a memorandum last October during Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to Moscow. The rail line between Moscow and Kazan is a priority project and will be eventually extended to Beijing. A 7,000 km high-speed rail connecting Moscow and Beijing will shorten the journey from six days to two.