President John Magufuli inspects construction works of the SGR project in Dar es Salaam. PHOTO | NMG
Rwanda and Tanzania are reviewing the designs for the
Isaka-Kigali standard gauge railway (SGR) line to accommodate
electricity-driven locomotives — the fastest in East Africa.
“We
want to have reduced travel time for both cargo and passengers on this
line between Dar es Salaam and Kigali. In order to accommodate the
efficiency for the railway, we have asked for a review of the
feasibility studies to accommodate the electric element,” said Rwanda’s
Minister of State in charge of transport Jean de Dieu Uwihanganye.
Mr
Uwihanganye spoke in Kigali last week where he met his Tanzanian
counterpart of Works, Transport and Communications, Makame Mbarawa.
The
Isaka-Kigali line was launched in January. By going electric, the two
countries will give the Central Corridor a competitive edge over the
Northern Corridor that runs through Kenya. Kenya’s SGR trains — launched
in May last year and currently operate between Nairobi and Mombasa —
run on diesel.
Rwanda and Tanzania are targeting
passenger trains travelling at up to 160kph and cargo trains at up to
120kph. That compares with 120kph and 100kph for the Ethiopian electric
rail, and 110kph and 80kph for the Kenya diesel line, respectively.
With
the diesel option, the trains between Isaka and Kigali would have run
at maximum speeds of 120kph for passengers and 80kph for cargo.
Kigali and Dar es Salaam intend to use open tenders for the
design review in the hope of accommodating the most suitable financing
option. This would break ranks with the government-to-government
sourcing that Kenya and Uganda did with China for their section of the
SGR. Kenya is now extending the line from Nairobi to Naivasha, a
distance of about 120 kilometres.
It is expected that
the winning bidder for the Isaka-Kigali line will do works, equipment
and logistics mobilisation from August with an expected groundbreaking
two months thereafter.
“We shall strive to follow
existing laws and regulations governing public tenders, and according to
the regulations, this will take us at least three months,” said Mr
Mbarawa.
Financing
However, the financing model could prove tricky given preferences by the two countries in the recent past.
In
February last year, Tanzania opted for its own domestic sources to fund
the $1.2 billion contract it awarded Turkish firm Yapi Merkezi and
Portuguese firm Mota-Engil to build the 205km line that will
run from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro.
run from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro.
This line is expected to be
completed by October next year. And on Wednesday, President John
Magufuli laid a foundation stone for the second phase of the
426km Morogoro-Dodoma railway line to be constructed by Yapi Merkezi.
Tanzania said it has already released $486 million as an advance payment
to the contractor.
“We have different financing models
to choose from and I believe we will consider one that’s better for our
people. At the moment, we can’t give a clear indication on what model
we prefer as we haven’t gotten to that stage yet,” said Mr Mbarawe.
Dar port
Meanwhile,
the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) has opened a liaison office in
Kigali as Dar es Salaam plans to make Rwanda its biggest transit market.
Mr Uwihanganye said that 80 per cent of Rwanda’s
external trade has utilised the Central Corridor over the past two
years, anchored by the port of Dar es Salaam, which registers an
eight-day dwell time. The opening of the new TPA office will cut this to
four days, which will reduce the overall time and cost of cargo.
“We
now don’t expect importers to travel to the Dar es Salaam port to clear
their goods, but instead use the Kigali office,” he said.
At
last week’s meeting between the Rwandan and Tanzania transport
ministers and the implementing agencies, the feasibility study should be
reviewed and a project implementation unit established by July. Bids
for contractors will then be floated with a ground-breaking target of
October.
From the previous design, the 1,320km SGR
project is expected to cost the two countries $2.5 billion. Tanzania was
expected to pay $1.3 billion while Rwanda was to raise $1.2 billion.
However, the electric element incorporation is expected to increase
these costs slightly.
The two countries are also
pushing for a lower time frame in movement of goods to a maximum of 13
hours between Dar-es-Salaam and Kigali, and 10 hours for the passenger
line.
In comparison, the Chinese-built 756 km $4
billion electrified rail line between Addis Ababa and Djibouti does a
maximum of 13 hours for its cargo line.
The Kenyan passenger train takes five hours while the cargo one takes eight hours.
Kenya-Uganda SGR
In
January, Tanzania in a tender notice indicated that it had set aside
funds for the purchase of the electric engines and carriages to operate
along the Central Corridor, making the country the second in the region
after Ethiopia to use high-speed electric cargo and passenger trains.
The
latest project between Dar es Salaam and Kigali enhances competition to
the port of Mombasa, as Kenya and Uganda still grapple with their joint
SGR project to Kampala.
Uganda is banking on Kenya to
complete its last phase of the project between the lakeside city of
Kisumu and the border town of Malaba in order to start the Malaba –
Kampala stretch.
In January, Kampala said that it was
considering revamping its metre gauge railway in the medium term as it
turned out that Kenya’s failure to get finances for the Kisumu-Malaba
leg could delay that of Uganda for at least three years.
“We
still have issues to sort out in 2018. I cannot answer when we will get
financial closure for Malaba-Kampala. We need to first agree with Kenya
on how quickly they can get financial closure for Kisumu-Malaba,” said
Secretary to the Treasury and Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of
Finance Keith Muhakanizi.
It is understood that a
meeting scheduled over the final funding proposal between the ministers
of finance and transport from Uganda and Kenya with China Exim Bank
officials, which was to be held in Beijing last October, failed to
materialise.
Instead the executives from China Exim
Bank flew in to Kampala and Nairobi in November to carry out due
diligence on the Uganda project proposal and contract application.
Kampala was challenged to meet some financial conditions which they said
they would by end of March this year.
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