New details have emerged about the billions of shillings the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) has earned in its first year of operations.
According to a report done by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), Kenya earned nearly Ksh10.33 Billion from the railway.
The figures were attributed to ticket sales to passengers and cargo transport to and from the mainland.
Freight services accounted for Ksh8.72 Billion of the revenue from the operations run by China Communications Construction Company.
5,039,988 tonnes of goods was ferried at a cost of Ksh1,707 per tonne.
For passengers, KNBS statistics show that slightly more 1.66 million tickets were sold in the year starting in January 2018 - earning the SGR Ksh1.61 billion in revenue.
Kenya owes the China Exim bank over Ksh324 billion for the SGR project with the revenues not enough to meet the operation costs, which were earlier estimated at Ksh1 billion a month or Ksh12 billion a year.
Recent reports alleged that the country risks losing some of its strategic assets if, by any chance, the country defaults in the loan payment.
Some measures have been taken to increase revenue collection including the doubling of the fare price for kids between the age of three and eleven for SGR's Madaraka Express.
According to the Acting Managing Director Philip Mainga, the move was in a bid to raise enough revenue to ease taxpayers of the debt burden owed to China.
