Rwanda’s minister of infrastructure Albert Nsengiyumva has revealed that all relevant studies have been completed towards the proposed railway from Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.
While chairing the inter-ministerial consultative meeting on the progress of the railway activities, Nsengiyumva insisted that plans to get funds are still underway. “We need around 5.1 billion for the whole project and we’re encouraging Private-Public-Partnership (PPP),” he remarked.
He explained that the PPP will be in terms of ‘Build-Operate-Transfer’ (BOT) but the period of transfer from the investor hasn’t been decided yet. “We intend to negotiate the concession period once we get an interested investor,” he remarked.
Currently, BAOBAB, UK’s railway construction company has shown interests but the committee has declined its offer due to a number of issues, among them according to the minister of transport in Tanzania Omar Nundu, their proposal didn’t abide with African Development Bank (AFDB) studies on the project.
“You see AFDB is funding the studies and if someone wants to bring something different from what they have to negotiate with our donors, it becomes hard, but we hope to get more investors onboard given the number of interests we’re getting from various people,” said Nundu.
Nsengiyumva seconded him adding that there was no need of panic since the project was vague and needed ample time to verify all the required needs before its inception.
“This is a very large railway, we’re talking of 1,500 kilometer railway I think it’s the largest in Africa, but I can assure you all relevant measures have been to speed up the project,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile the overall idea of the railway is to connect Rwanda and Burundi to the sea port, reducing the amount spent in transporting particularly heavy cargo. It is also believed that the railway will improve trade and lower prices since only transport contributes 40% of commodity prices.
Burundi, though close to Tanganyika Lake, most of their imported goods are picked at Tanzania’s port but the road network is poor. “The railway will benefit my country since it will reduce time spent through road and water transport,” he remarked.
The project which is nine years old was first initiated by both Tanzania and Rwanda, then later Burundi joined in. “All we want is to connect countries in the region, especially landlocked ones and we hope soon the Democratic Republic of Congo will join us,” says Rwanda’s minister of infrastructure.
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