n South African Transport Minister Dullah Omar announced on June 7 that design work for the 4·4 km extension of Cape Town’s suburban rail service to Baden-Powell Drive is to be completed this year; construction will begin in 2003.

n Government officials are now preparing legislation to privatise AFE, according to Uruguay’s Minister of Finance & the Economy Alberto Bensión. Parliament is due to consider this and other bills enabling state-owned enterprises to be sold off over the coming weeks.

n South Africa’s Industrial Development Corp is seeking World Bank funding and foreign investment to revive coal export traffic from the mothballed Moatize mine in Mozambique. Transport Minister Tomas Salomao has proposed awarding a 50-year operating concession under which a private consortium would finance the necessary reconstruction of CFM’s 660 km Sena rail network linking the mine to the Indian Ocean port of Beira.

n Ikea Rail planned to launch its open access rail service between ??lmhult in Sweden and Duisburg in Germany on June 27 (RG 5.02 p268).

n During a recent meeting with Jorge Sobisch, Governor of the Argentinian province of Neuquén, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos expressed his support for a new trans-Andean rail link that could see the Lonquimay - Zapala project revived to create a route from Concepción in Chile to Bahía Blanca in Argentina. An initial approach has already been made to the Inter-American Development Bank to explore funding issues, said Lagos.

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