The National Development and Reform Commission of China (NDRC) recently released a key project list for railways dedicated to serve specific companies from 2019 to 2020. This is expected to continue to support railway and infrastructure investments in the following two years, Kallanish notes.

This document describes 127 dedicated railway projects with a total length of 1,586 kilometres. Market participants expect that this will bring a total investment of around CNY 150 billion ($21 billion). Among them, 13 railways dedicated to steel companies account for a total of 79.4km.

Companies with a shipment volume of more than 1.5 million tonnes/year are required to transport 80% of their goods by railway by 2020 and reach 85% by 2025, according to the NDRC.

In the first eight months of this year, CNY 449.6 billion in railway investments has been reached, completing around 56.2% of the 2019’ target. China Railway Corporation (CRC) plans to commission 6,800km of new railways in 2019 (see Kallanish passim).