High-speed rail project running behind schedule

It was exposed by the Apple Daily reports on 8th May that, according the current schedule, there will be an estimated delay of at least a year to the 669 million HKD high-speed rail project in Hong Kong. The project has overrun by 4.4 billion HKD, and is at the risk of exhausting the emergency expenses, facing several billions HKD claims. According to the original plan, the high-speed rail project should be completed in April 2015, followed by a test operation, and should be officially ready to be in use in August 2015.

MTR Chairman, Mr Chien, said at the shareholders meeting that at the moment, the expenditure costs for the high-speed rail still lies within the budget, and the financial management is not too different to the original plan. He emphasised that he has confidence that the project will be completed by 2015 as planned. He added that he supports the government's measures of first-hand property sales, and he is not worried that such measures might affect real estate sales. He also pointed out that at the moment, the government is not planning to repurchase MTR.

Mr Chien’s words were reiterated by the Secretary for Transport and Housing Bureau, Mr Cheung. He said that he has been in close contact with MTR, and is certain that, from the information that he has obtained, MTR will be completed on schedule, and the expenditure costs are still within the budget.
Cheung continued that, MTR has timely submitted information to the authorities, therefore the information at his hand is indeed the latest. He added that he will consult MTR for more details, but concluded that the project will proceed according to plan.