IMEC is more than a railway and covers digital, electricity cables

06 Oct 2026, 08:22 by Paul Antonopoulos · Greek City Times

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A Gulf News opinion piece argues that the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) should not be judged only by how quickly a cross-border freight railway is built, because digital cables, electricity links and a clean-hydrogen pipeline could advance on separate timelines.

Writing in Gulf News on October 3, Your Money Editor Justin Varghese said IMEC’s best-known promise — containers moving between India and Europe by ship and train — may also be the part that takes longest to deliver. The agreement announced at the 2023 G20 summit, he wrote, also covers digital and electricity cables and a pipe to export clean hydrogen, each serving different customers and needing its own funding.

Renewed support from Donald Trump has put IMEC back in focus as governments look for trade routes less exposed to disruption, Varghese said. For businesses, he argued, the useful questions are narrower: what is being built, who is paying for it, and when customers can use it.

He pointed to a defined digital project tied to the corridor’s wider aims. An EU Global Gateway document, he noted, places the planned 9,000-kilometre Blue Raman subsea cable within IMEC’s digital framework and lists €400 million in investment, including €37 million from the EU. Those figures, he wrote, do not show that the railway has been funded or built, or that planned electricity and hydrogen links are ready.

On freight, Varghese described a demanding commercial test. A container would leave India by ship, transfer to a train at a Gulf port, travel toward the Mediterranean and return to a ship for Europe. Every transfer adds time and cost, and the journey would have to beat ordinary sea shipping. Ships already connect India, the Gulf and Europe; the overland section is what would create a different route. The UAE’s freight railway reaches the Saudi border, he wrote, but a working connection through to the Mediterranean is still missing.

A 2025 Atlantic Council study, cited in the piece, identified the proposed link involving Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel as a major gap and estimated a funding shortfall of $4.86 billion to $5.18 billion for a basic UAE-to-Haifa freight route — an estimate for one section, not an agreed budget for the whole corridor.

Disruption has made the case for another route easier to grasp, Varghese wrote, but an alternative helps only if it works when needed. Cargo sailing to a port inside the Gulf could still pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The Atlantic Council has identified access through Oman to the Arabian Sea as one way to reduce that exposure, though it would need an effective connection to the rest of the route. Rail would also require agreed border procedures and charges, and schedules shippers could rely on. Building track, he said, would not by itself create a service businesses can book.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen captured the political urgency in April 2026, saying it was time to advance connectivity projects like the corridor while calling for more ways to move exports without relying solely on Hormuz. Varghese’s conclusion was that support now has to become projects with clear costs, customers and schedules, and that the corridor could provide useful connections before its trains run.

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