During the meeting (the third since the establishment of the Railway Forum at the beginning of 2015), Ferrovie dello Stato presented the result of an analysis conducted on the basis of the indications given by participating companies and of a survey carried out by the Directorate General for Cultural and Economic Promotion and Innovation based on reports by Italy’s diplomatic and consular network worldwide.
At present Sub-Saharan Africa is revealed to be among the most promising regions in terms of development opportunities in the railway sector. Some of the underlying reasons are the high population growth rates, the rate of expansion of urban areas, the great incidence of land transport costs on the price of commodities, the need to upgrade and integrate existing rail transport networks, in addition to the attention focused on this sector by the African Union’s Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA). The Forum also made an overview of the financial instruments that SACE, Simest and the Development Cooperation service can make available to Italian companies intending to invest in this sector.
The Railway Forum (like similar forums dedicated to ports or airports) aims to take stock of the main international infrastructure implementing projects with a view to enabling Italian companies operating in this sector to offer integrated projects with the financial support of SACE and Simest and with the institutional support of the diplomatic and consular network.
