“They can make all the noise they want...so long as I get them to our destination safely,” the president remarked yesterday as he formally flagged off the 1,219-kilometre, Dar es Salaam-Mwanza-Kigoma Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project that has become one of the flagship ventures of his administration’s push towards a truly-developed Tanzania.
Magufuli laid the foundation stone for Phase One of the project, covering the 200-kilometre stretch from Dar to Morogoro. The event was held at Pugu station on the outskirts of the city.
He described the launch as a milestone that denotes the national infrastructural transformation that he promised during election campaigns in 2015.
Upon completion in about two-and-a-half years time (September 2019), the ultra-modern railway is expected to improve the movement of transit goods from the port of Dar es Salaam to landlocked neighbouring countries, thus boosting regional trade links.
According to the president, the whole idea is to boost intra-African trade which he said is currently below 15 per cent compared to Europe and America which is above 40 per cent.
“The project is the first of its kind to be launched here in Tanzania, and the good thing is that it is being built with our own money, making it 100 per cent Tanzanian,” he said.
The railway will also help provide respite for the country’s major roads which are currently wiltering under the weight of heavy duty vehicles carrying load weights well beyond what the roads are built to withstand, Magufuli pointed out.
According to Works and Transport Minister Prof Makame Mbarawa, the electric bullet train(s) that will ply the railway at top speeds of 160 kilometres per hour will have the capacity to carry 10,000 tonnes of cargo at a go - equivalent to 500 trucks of 20 tonnes each.
At the same time, they will drastically cut travelling times from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro (one and a half hours), Dar-Dodoma (three and a half hours), and Dar-Mwanza (seven hours).
Tanzania will be the third African country to have the new rail technology after Morocco and South Africa.
The joint project contractor companies are Motal Engil of Portugal and Yapi Merkezi of Turkey. Phase One (Dar-Morogoro) is expected to cost $1.22 million (2.8 trillion/-), including 1trn/- that was set aside in the national budget for this financial year.
According to Prof Mbarawa, plans to build a standard gauge railway spent a long time on the drawing board because there were differing views within government on the project’s viability in relation to its cost.
“There were those who were saying we should improve the current rail infrastructure, others said we should construct the SGR alongside the existing rail infrastructure. The debate went on for a long time,” the minister said.
The managing director of the state-run Reli Assets Company (RAHCO), Masanja Kadogosa said the project will go a long way to improving the country’s economy and better the lives of its people.
The entire project, to be carried out in phases, is being financed on a $7.6 billion loan from China's Export-Import Bank (Exim).
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