Vietnam Railway gets more foreign investment to upgrade HANOI - Viet Nam Railway has benefited from the injection of US$213 million into eight foreign-invested projects to upgrade the country's dilapidated rail system in the last 10 years. The capital has come mainly from Japan, France, Germany and Austria. German projects worth $50 million focus on upgrading locomotives and carriages. A project to repair locomotives by the Da Nang Locomotive Enterprise will start at the end of this year. Projects paid for by France, Japan, and Austria total $163 million and concentrate on rebuilding railway bridges on the trans-Viet Nam rail link, and upgrading telecom networks and railway crossings. The railway sector has begun the surveying for the $1 million French project to restore four railway tunnels in Hai Van Pass. The project will last 41 months. This year, the railway sector will take bids for a project to modernize the information and signal system of the Ha Noi-Vinh railway line in June 2000, according to the Railway General Department. The project, the first phase of a programme to modernize the whole information and signal system of the national railway service, is scheduled to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2002. Under the project, a Ha Noi-Vinh optical cable line will be installed, two new switchboards will be assembled and three others, upgraded. Total investment capital for this project was estimated at US$ 176 billion, including 58 million French franc from the official development assistance of France. The second phase, which is also expected to be financed by France, will assemble new telephone exchanges and upgrade some existing ones for 24 stations on the Ha Noi-Vinh railway route. The Ministry of Transport has asked the Japan Bank for International Co-operation (JBIC) to continue financing the upgrading of 34 railway bridges, building railway corridors and replacing 100km of narrow tracks on the trans-Viet Nam route. Vietnam News Agency - April 13, 2000.