Dr. Ahmed Nazif, Egypt's Prime Minister, attended yesterday the ceremony for the signing of the contracts on the implementation of the second phase of the third line of Great Cairo Subway for LE 3.3 billion. The contracts include works concerning semaphores, communications and control, civil, mechanical and electrical works as well as the activities concerning the railway. The contracts were signed by and between the Egyptian Transportation Minister Mohamed Mansour and the French Minister of Foreign Trade Anne-Marie Idrac. The implementation of the two phases is worth a total LE 7.5 billion.
Following the ceremony at Smart Village with the presence of some ministers and governors, the transportation minister said the French government has provided LE 5 billion of technical and financial support for transport projects over the last four decades. He added that France was the first country to help Egypt carry out the studies for the first subway line from Helwan to Marg and that cooperation is continuing on the third line, which is currently being implemented. Mansour said: "The second operational phase will start on July 1 between Abbasiyah Square, Ahram Street and Heliopolis for a total of 7.2 kilometers and four underground stations (Cairo International Fair, the stadium, the girl's faculty and Al-Ahram station). This line should be inaugurated in October 2013."
Mansour pointed out that the ministry has laid out the necessary plans to complete the underground project by setting up the third and fourth lines. The third stage of the third line will include Imbaba, Mohandeseen and Boulaq in the west of Cairo, pass by downtown Cairo, Abbasiya and Heliopolis and extend as far as Cairo International Airport in the east. Its total length will be 15 km and it will have 15 stations.
He explained that the 12 Km first stage of the fourth line will include Rimaya Square in the Pyramid area, el-Sawah zone and Port Said St., will connect the Great Museum in Rimaya Square to the Pyramids, King Saleh station on the first line and Giza station on the second line, and will also pass underneath Pyramid St. He said this line will serve the residential and tourist areas, thus becoming the basis to link 6th October City and the subway lines in Great Cairo. He said 4.5 million passengers a day will benefit from this human and civilized means of transportation. On the sidelines of the ceremony, Egypt's International Cooperation Minister Fayza Aboul Naga held a bilateral meeting with the French Minister to review the economic and technical cooperation between the two countries and the most important projects that France, as a partner for development, has contributed to in Egypt in several vital fields. Among such fields are the subway third line, Kasr el-Aini Hospital, the establishment of power, drinking water and sewage plants nationwide in addition to the projects being carried out by France as part of the institutional twinning program between the Ministry of International Cooperation and the EU.
Fayza Aboul Naga welcomed the French approval to finance the studies on the third phase of the subway third line as well as the studies on the first phase of the fourth line. She explained that the meeting discussed ways to turn into deeds the mutual speeches concerning the debt swap agreement signed in April during French former President Chirac's official visit to Egypt. For her part, Anne-Marie Idrac said that the global economic crisis will not affect the French aid to the projects being carried out by the Egyptian government. She pointed out that there is a special clause allowing the French government to provide support for infrastructure projects in Egypt, and that this will greatly help provide soft loans for projects such as subway tunnels.
