BEIRUT, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon and Syria are advancing plans to reconnect Tripoli Port to the Syrian railway network, with Lebanon commissioning a consultancy to review and update the design of the Tripoli-Al-Aboudieh railway line, Lebanese Minister of Public Works and Transport Fayez Rasamny said Tuesday.
Rasamny made the remarks at a ceremony at the Grand Serail in Beirut to sign contracts and memoranda of understanding on strategic partnerships, investment, and sustainable development in Tripoli.
He said the priority was to connect Tripoli Port to the Lebanese-Syrian border through Al-Aboudieh and then to Homs and the Syrian railway network.
The minister added that Lebanon and Syria had agreed to form a joint technical team to review existing studies, update the route, and assess technical requirements and expected transport flows before moving to implementation and financing requirements.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who also spoke at the ceremony, said the consultancy had been commissioned to review and update the design of the Tripoli-Al-Aboudieh line, calling it a step that would take the project from an idea to a modern feasibility study determining its cost and implementation stages.
Rasamny said that linking Tripoli Port to the Syrian railway network and onward to Iraq, Jordan, the Gulf, and Türkiye could open a market much larger than Lebanon's domestic one.
He said the railway link forms part of a broader plan to develop Tripoli as a regional logistics center, adding that Tripoli Port's container-handling capacity was planned to increase from around 250,000 twenty-foot equivalent units annually to about 800,000 in the first expansion phase and eventually to more than 1.8 million TEUs.
