THSRC insists it will start service by end of October

Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵), builder of the nation's first bullet train, yesterday insisted that it will start services by the end of October, despite a government official's assertion that the deadline cannot be met.

"We haven't changed our timetable in this regard," Huang Yao-wei (黃耀緯), a public-relations director at THSRC, told the Taipei Times, rejecting a report by a Chinese-language newspaper that the train's launch date may be delayed until December.

The paper quoted Wu Fu-hsiang (吳福祥), deputy director-general of the Taiwan High Speed Rail Bureau, as saying that delays in construction would make it impossible to implement the service by October.

Responding to a request from THSRC, the bureau started an inspection of the 345km-long high-speed railway on Tuesday.

Wu said the inspection will take about five months to complete, which means implementing the service by Oct. 31 would be out of the question.

For now, THSRC is accelerating its progress in completing the rest of the construction work to meet the deadline as promised, Huang said. At the end of April, THSRC had completed 84.6 percent of the construction work on the high-speed railway, he added.

Another problem THSRC needs to solve involves fundraising, as the company has delayed its fundraising schedule twice because of problems in finding investors.

The financial problems have reportedly led to THSRC deferring payments to the Japanese-led Taiwan Shinkansen Corp (TSC, 台灣新幹線), which resulted in delays in the delivery of train carriages and core systems.

But Arthur Chiang (江金山), vice president of THSRC's public relations department, said on Tuesday that there have been no delays in construction payments to TSC.

After failing to pool NT$13.95 billion (US$444.9 million) last month as scheduled, THSRC came up with a new fundraising plan with its syndicated banks, according to a THSRC official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

According to the new plan, THSRC hopes to collect NT$5.5 billion by the end of July and NT$2 billion by September through the issuance of preferred shares, he said. The company also plans to raise NT$24 billion by November, and NT$8 billion by June next year by issuing common shares, he said.

THSRC chairwoman Nita Ing (殷琪) previously said the company would apply to list on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in the next half of the year, but the official said the plan was still in the air, as the company is waiting for investors to show more interest in THSRC.