Uganda, Tanzania SGR line clear as Kenya derailed
Staff, 2023-01-15 00:00:32,
Uganda this week formally terminated the contract of China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) to build the country’s first phase of the standard gauge railway (SGR), a 273-km line from Malaba to Kampala, almost eight years after the project was launched.
The Chinese firm failed to convince Beijing to finance it so Kampala terminated the contract in November 2022, and has now opted for a different financing model with Yapi Merkezi of Turkey. The Turkish firm which, incidentally, is building part of the Tanzanian SGR network, is expected to submit a response to government’s request for construction in the next few weeks, paving the way for procurement, said Uganda SGR Project Coordinator Perez Wamburu.
Read: Uganda ditches China, turns to Turkish firm to build SGR
In June 2022, Uganda’s Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka started to review CHEC’s contract after it became apparent that China Exim Bank – Kampala’s main infrastructure projects financier of the past decade – had grown cold feet on bankrolling the SGR.
“We read between the lines when China’s Ambassador to Uganda said that after the Covid-19 pandemic, China has become more cautious on financing big infrastructure projects in Africa. We all know that Covid didn’t leave economies of the world the same,” Wamburu said.
He explained that Uganda was forced to rethink its options and cast its net wider for other financiers when its last submission for financing to the Exim…
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