Foreign stragetic investors allowed to finance Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway

BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Indigenous and foreign strategic investors will have a chance to invest in China's longest high-speed railway linking the capital of Beijing and eastern financial hub Shanghai as the government intends to diversify the investors, Xinhua learned Friday from the Ministry of Railways (MOR).

An MOR official told Xinhua at the ground-breaking ceremony for the railway in Beijing that public securities offerings would be used, when conditions were mature, to finance the project so as to reduce the proportion of government investment.

The 1,318-km line with an investment of 220.9 billion yuan (31.6 billion U.S. dollars) is the most expensive construction project in China's history.

The Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway Co. Ltd was inaugurated in late December to lead the construction, and has a registered capital of 115 billion yuan. However this accounts for only half of the total investment.

An official written reply from the National Development and Reform Commission verified that the company may use bank loans and bond issuance to offset the capital shortage.

All kinds of investors should be fully mobilized while local and overseas strategic investors may be introduced to diversify the investor profile, said the document.

China Railway Construction Investment Corporation, the investment and financing arm of the MOR for the country's key railway projects, contributed the largest share of 56.267 percent or 64.707 billion yuan to the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway Co. Ltd.

Ping An Asset Management Co., Ltd., under the ping An Group and the National Council for Social Security Fund invested 16 billion yuan and 10 billion yuan respectively.

The remainder came from the investment companies of the local governments of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shangdong, Anhui, Jiangsu, Nanjing and Shanghai which lie along the projected rail line.

Upon its completion in 2013, the railway involving 21 stations will double the existing transport capacity to 160 million passengers annually and halve the journey time from the present 10hours to five hours.

Though designed for express trains with a speed of 350 kilometers per hour, the line will run 300-km-per-hour trains in the early stages of operation.