Economy

Rwanda denies dumping joint Kenya railway route for Tanzania

VOI

Ongoing construction works of the standard gauge railway in Voi on March 15. PHOTO | FILE

Rwanda has denied that it had dropped plans to build a new railway connecting Kigali to Mombasa in favour of the Tanzania route.

Rwandan Minister for Finance and Economic Planning Claver Gatete was last week quoted saying that Kigali will opt for a Tanzanian route because it will be shorter and cheaper.

This prompted unease especially at time when Uganda has opted to build a pipeline for its oil through Tanzania rather than Kenya.

The executive director of Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTCA) Donat Bagula said the Rwandan minister had been misquoted by a section of the media.

“Rwanda has not pulled out of the Northern Corridor and this has been clarified in the local media following the misquoting of the minister,” said a NCTTCA communications office in a statement in response to questions asked by the Business Daily.

According to The New Times, a Rwandan publication, the country is still on course to linking their railway to Mombasa.

“Rwanda is not pulling out of the Kenyan railway route. What I pointed out was that the Tanzanian route is shorter and slightly cheaper compared to the Kenyan one.

“To suggest that Rwanda was pulling out of one railway route in favour of the other is simply misleading,” Gatete told The New Times last week. Rwanda estimates that building the railway line along the Northern Corridor to link Mombasa will cost $ 1 billion and $800-900 million on Tanzanian route.

Rwanda and other countries along the corridor had an agreement in 2013 to link up the port of Mombasa using the SGR and each country is required to construct their own section.

Only Kenya has so far made significant progress in the construction of its line, with 80 per cent of the work completed, while Uganda and Rwanda are still discussing the financial deals.

Last week, Kenya announced that it had an option of terminating its SGR line in Kisumu following the news that Rwanda would be pulling out of the corridor.

The original plan is to construct the railway up to Malaba.