Railway Business Mushrooms in MENA Region

With railway investment said to be in the region of USD $300 billion in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region, there has never been a better time to invest in railways in the area.

The Emirate of Dubai alone is building over 30,000 km of track, the bulk of which is for high speed mainline routes, and over 3000km of metro lines. Meanwhile Saudi Arabia is about to open a 450km high speed railway link across the desert from Jeddah to Mecca and Medina, and Morocco is constructing a TGV line between Casablanca and Tangiers, which will be the first such high speed service in Africa. Bahrain is planning a new causeway for rail and road worth USD $5 billion to connect with the 2117km GCC Railway Network that will open in 2018.

European and Asian companies are in the thick of the investment boom with Spain, France, Germany, the UK, China, Japan and South Korean companies getting large scale contracts for the construction, operation and maintenance of the networks across the region. In return the economies of the client countries will be able to diversify and benefit away from their current core economies.