Consortium breaks ground on Lima metro line

Construction work began this week on the US$5.8bn Lima metro line No.2, Peru's biggest transport infrastructure project.

The initiative will create 11,000 direct and indirect jobs during its 62-month construction period, Carlos Royo, general manager of the Metro de Lima Línea 2 consortium, said during a televised ceremony in Lima.

The consortium, made up of Spain's ACS and FCC, Italian companies Impregilo and AnsaldoBreda and Peru's Cosapi, which was awarded the 35-year concession in March, will build 35km of tunnels and 35 underground stations. The line is expected to serve 1mn passengers daily, he said.

"This is the most important project in Latin America and one of the most important in the world. It will change our lives and turn us into a modern, first world capital city," President Ollanta Humala said at the ceremony. "I hope they will remain firm and not halt this timetable. Otherwise there will be sanctions."

The consortium plans to advance tunnels 15m per day to meet its goal of completing the line by 2020, Royo said. The 35 stations will be fitted with escalators and elevators, in addition to security cameras, he said.

The consortium has also built metro lines in Barcelona, Rome, Madrid and Doha.

The concessionaire earlier this month secured US$750mn in loans from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and US$150mn from Caracas-based lender CAF.

Brazil's Odebrecht and Peruvian engineering company Graña y Montero completed the second stretch of Line 1 of the Lima Metro in May 2014.

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