Pretoria - Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele today signed a ground-breaking agreement on railways and other transport-related matters with Chinese Railway Minister Liu Zhijun.
Ndebele is part of a South African delegation in China led by President Jacob Zuma during his three-day state visit.
He said through rail, South Africa could move from being a developing country to a developed country by transporting people and goods efficiently, effectively and with the least cost to the environment and economy.
"We are confident that our friends in the world including the Chinese can help us leapfrog many stages on our journey to becoming a developed country," he said.
Zhijun said his country was willing to share its expertise in the development of railways networks.
"We are willing to share this expertise with South Africa. We operate 86000km of railway track, 7000km of high speed rail, and we have 13000 high-speed projects under construction.
"We operate the largest network of high-speed rail in the world. The Shanghai to Beijing railway line is the largest in the world, but in addition we are specialists in the development of highland rail, high speed rail, upgrading of networks and their maintenance," he said.
The agreement recognises the need to find new approaches for consolidating, expanding and deepening the rapid developments in the transport sector between South and China.
It takes into consideration the framework of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (FOCAC).
It seeks to promote investments, industry, trade and co-operation between South Africa and China in the area of rail.
The railways agreement will foster close co-operation in rail infrastructure maintenance and development, financing, network safety and regulation, technology transfer, harmonisation of technical standards and human resource development.
The agreement includes identifying research institutions and private organisations such as universities and private companies that have the technical and financial capacity to implement the specific projects in the transport sector.
The two countries agreed that there will be an exchange of engineers and related professionals and broad cooperation in the areas of intelligent transport systems, environmentally sustainable and labour-intensive best practices.
