Brazil has shelved a planned railway to ship commodities destined for China through Peru as it was too costly and faced “absurd” engineering challenges, a Brazilian official said.
The 5,000-km (3,300-mile) railway over the Andes to the Pacific coast, announced during a visit by President Xi Jinping in 2014, was meant to speed up soybean and iron ore exports to China at a lower cost by bypassing the Panama Canal.
But at an estimated cost of $80 billion, the railway would not be commercially viable if it transported just commodities and not more valuable goods, Jorge Arbache, vice planning minister for international affairs, told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday.
Peru also opposed the planned route that cut through one of the country’s most important nature reserves, he said.
