South Korea s President Moon Jae-in on Friday during his tour at the Metro s Third line in Cairo along with Minister of Transportation Kamel El-Wazir (Photo : Egyptian Transportation Ministry)
Accompanied by Egypt’s Minister of Transportation Kamel El-Wazir and Metro Authority officials, President Moon toured Adly Mansour central station, which connects the New Administrative Capital with all the country's cities and governorates.
The station, which is named after the country's former interim president Adly Mansour (2013-2014), includes a full-service transport complex and a commercial investment zone on a total area of 15 feddans.
It will connect five different modes of transportation countrywide: the third metro line, the electric train route, a railway station, a SuperJet station, and bus rapid transit (BRT).
The third metro line links eastern and western Cairo, running from Cairo University through Imbaba, Abbasiya and Adly Mansour metro stations.
During the tour, the South Korean president listened to a brief presentation about the Metro’s third line project as well as the contribution of the South Korean government to the project including a 2018 contract with Hyundai Rotem to manufacture and supply Egypt with 32 air-conditioned traincars.
According to the contract, the company will also oversee the maintenance of the trains for eight years. The value of the contract is EGP 640 million (about $40.7 million) in addition to $317.7 million financed by the South Korean government. Egypt has received more than nine trains already.
Moon also watched a presentation about the cooperation between Cairo and Seoul to localize the railway industry in Egypt through a memorandum of understanding (MoU) valued at $650 million that was signed in November 2021.
The deal was signed between Egypt’s National Egyptian Railways Industries Company (NERIC) and Hyundai Rotem to locally manufacture 40 metro traincars for the second and third metro lines, and maintain them for eight years.
In its statement, the transportation ministry also touted other cooperation between Egypt and South Korea in this field, especially in the modernisation of signaling and communication systems in south Upper Egypt region.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in is in Egypt from 19 to 21 January as part of his Middle East tour that started earlier this week in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
His visit to Egypt, the first by a South Korean president in 16 years, comes as part of a comprehensive partnership agreement signed between the two countries during Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi’s visit to Seoul in March 2016.
Moon met with El-Sisi earlier on Thursday, where they oversaw the signing of several MoUs, including a $1 billion deal on “financial cooperation” from 2022 to 2026 between the two countries.
Other MoUs included a joint feasibility study for economic and trade partnership and a $251 million loan to upgrade the Luxor-High Dam railway line.
A grant of $8 million was also signed.
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