China’s railway loan terms rejected 

Time to lash the Chinese with the Article 44 whip?
mtls2005
“He admitted it might take 30 years or longer before financial returns would be positive.”
And that’s the whole point, the reason why the project cannot afford to be burdened with too-high financing-costs, and why Thailand has to continue to be firm on this point.
Too high an interest rate would mean that the whole thing becomes unjustifiable from the Thai point of view.
China, however, is now committed to the line being built all the way down to the ports. The section through Laos is underway, but the main benefit to the Chinese will be from adding a new export route across Thailand. It might be that splitting the Thai section of the project into three or four sections is actually a negotiating ploy by Thailand to keep the pressure up on China. Who knows?
I do believe that the project will get built, and I do think it will have a very long-term benefit to the Thai economy, mainly from the increased opportunities to export agricultural products and cheaper manufactured goods back up the line as the containerised exports are shuttled down to Laem Chabang.
There will also be all sorts of profits to be made, from land speculation and industrial estate development, along the line. But those benefits, while real, are more likely to go to private capital than to the project itself. Unless someone has a clever “fix” to transfer those gains from private to public hands.
Ricardo
Maybe they could swap some subs for a railway! No, wait, the Chinese don’t want their junk back!
RichardColeman
The high-speed rail service between Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima would start around 2021 or 2022. Not a hope of that. It will take far longer than four years. For example, a similar-length narrow-gauge passenger and freight line took seven years to complete civils, tunnels, viaducts, land formation, drainage etc. Track 250km means 500km of track not including turnouts (crossings), siding and platform loops (loops diverge from the mainline mainly in stations to get the train to stop at the station off the mainline to allow a “through” train to pass).
Then the difficult bit comes. OCS overhead catenary system) signalling. They will use axle counters for high speed and not standard insulated joints. I’m not an expert on communications, buts it’s pretty clever stuff on a high-speed railway.
Dave67/ThaiVisa