China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) and Egyptian companies Samcrete and the Arab Organization for Industrialization have won a $9 billion contract to build a 543-km high-speed railway in Egypt, reported Egypt Independent on Sept. 5, citing “senior sources.”
Accommodating train speeds of 250km/h, the line would link the Mediterranean coast at El-Alamein to the Red Sea at Ain Sokhna, cutting the journey between the two cities to three hours. The scheme’s importance to Egypt was compared to the Suez Canal by the chief executive of Samcrete, Sherif Nazmy, who told Egypt Independent’s parent, Arab-language newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm that it would be the first new electric railway in Egypt since 1854.
