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Eighteen nations have committed themselves to the huge project of integrating Asia into a single railway network - and now must find a way of footing the bill.
China, Russia and 16 other countries ranging from prosperous South Korea to impoverished Nepal on Friday signed an inter-governmental accord to establish the Trans-Asia Railway (TAR), aiming to promote trade and balanced development.
Transport ministers from 41 countries, not all of whom are involved in the railway project, ended a two-day forum Saturday by resolving to explore every avenue of finance for transport needs in general in the Asia-Pacific region.
They vowed to mobilise "financial sources for the development of the (entire) transport system, its maintenance and operation from all possible sources, including private-sector partnership and other financial arrangements."
No one has done detailed costings of the TAR - Laos, for example has no railway tracks at present - but it will certainly be vast. And there are many competing claims for cash in the region.
The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), which organised the meeting, forecasts that investment in all infrastructure - not just transport, but power, gas, water, oil and other facilities - will require 224 billion dollars per year in the next 10 years.
But the Bangkok-based agency says funds are already short, even before the TAR gets under way.
"We have a shortfall now (for all infrastructure projects) which is in excess of 20 billion dollars in the region," Barry Cable, director of UNESCAP's Transport and Tourism Division, told reporters.
But he remained optimistic, saying UNESCAP was closely working with international financial institutions - including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank.
"They can contribute to the economic development in the region."
He said undoubtedly the largest financier of infrastructure would be governments, but also stressed a range of other options exists - including private or public-private investment funds.
Asia's huge savings, deposited mostly in US Treasury bonds and elsewhere in America, could be used to establish an Asian infrastructure fund, he suggested.
"The fund could perhaps transcend the portfolio of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank. The fund could perhaps be necessary to establish an infrastructure development bank, something like the ADB and the World Bank, but to focus on infrastructure development," Cable said.
The 81,000-kilometer (50,200-mile) TAR network, first mooted by the UN in 1960, is dubbed the "Iron Silk Road" after the ancient trade route. It would link capitals, ports and industrial hubs across 28 Asian countries all the way to Europe.
The network would connect trans-Asian railway networks with Russia and Mongolia in the north, Malaysia and Indonesia in the south, South Korea in the east and Turkey in the west.
UNESCAP chief Kim Hak-Su has said it would "link the hinterland areas in the deep interior of the Asian continent with Asia's bustling maritime cities and European markets" to ease uneven economic development.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2006

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