Siemens offers locomotives for Vietnam's highspeed railway

Siemens president and CEO Roland Busch told Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at a meeting in Hanoi Monday that the company can transfer the technology of building carriages and can provide the trailway signal system for the project.

The North-South highspeed railway is among the largest transport projects that Vietnam plans for the upcoming decades.

It should be approved in policy by next year and construction is scheduled to begin before 2030.

Two sections of the railway, one from Hanoi to Vinh and the other from HCMC to Nha Trang, will begin construction before 2030 and the whole route should be finished by 2045.

Busch made the offers after PM Chinh proposed that Siemens consider participating in the construction of the railway as well as the second metro line in HCMC, a 11-kilometer that mostly runs underground with a price tag of VND47.8 trillion.

The PM asked Siemens to partner with Vietnam in the fields of high technology and innovation, green transformation, renewable energy, transportation (such as electric vehicle production) and digital transformation.

He also asked about potential for Siemens to build a research and development center built in Vietnam and urged the company to cooperate with the National Innovation Center. He also wants the group to expand cooperation with Vietnamese technology enterprises.

Vietnam would create favorable conditions for businesses like Siemens to invest long-term, Chinh said.

In Vietnam, Siemens established a representative office in 1993 and now has three representative offices in Hanoi, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh City. It also has a manufacturing factory in the southern province of Binh Duong.

Siemens cooperates with Vietnam in many fields, especially renewable energy and transport. Its participation in one solar power project is estimated to contribute one billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to the country's electricity system each year.

The company has also designed and supplied 16 diesel locomotives for Vietnam Railway Corporation.