Chinese/Thai Rail Mega Projects look increasingly likely.
Chinese/Thai Rail Mega Projects look increasingly likely.
Last month China took the first step in approving an 11.4 Bill US$ plan to build two massive rail lines from near Yunnan's provincial capital Kunming, to the Laos boarder and the the other from Dali in Western Yunnan to the Myanmar boarder. Either way, post Laos and Myanmar the tracks must run through Thailand, the sole land bridge to Singapore. Malaysia and Singapore have already approve a high speed line to be finished by 2020.
This China/Thai rail project is the sort of grand scheme that suits an authoritarian regime. Battling corruption is a major theme of the Thai military junta that is now running this country. Discussion by the government last month about creating an agency to oversee the transportation plan is a good development: the establishment of a railway department within the Ministry of Transportation to take over control of the railway infrastructure. That seems now to be happening.
If it happens, as I believe it will/must this would be huge! On the same gigantic development green energy was when I first wrote about that 3-4 years ago. Members should help and post here if they read something or have insights on any of this as it gets going. Perhaps one way to monitor this is through an industry magazine called "International Railway Journal"?
"The line will likely come down the corridor from Kunming toward Chiang Rai and then down through Chiang Mai to Bangkok, if it happens". Says Greg Wood, a railway consultant.
Besides making huge economic sense, it will serve on a grand scale the geopolitical interest of the Chinese governments to link Thailand/Malaysia and Singapore. Its a sort of geopolitical coup against an over dominating and tiring (tyrant?) USA. Currently Thailand looses allot competitive GDP per transported goods per KM, due to transportation going with trucks on crowded roads. Pylon, which says its an absolute must, explained this to me at some length when I visited them some months ago.
I see this mega Rail development as a huge new industry to come on par, or even larger, then the green energy explosion now happening in full, which I was well ahead of any broker research on this with my core DEMCO choice, already visited since 2007. TRC (4.22) is my initial choice in this which has stated it will benefit and participate in full on this likely development which we now must monitor and learn more about.
Best Regards,
Paul Renaud.
