Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia inferred that the delegation to China led by President Uhuru Kenyatta failed to secure funds for the second phase of the Standard Gauge Railway during the recent trip.
This was occasioned by the Chinese Premier’s decision to defer granting President Uhuru’s Ksh380 billion funding request that the project would cost.
The Chinese Premier, Xi JinPing, has of late been criticised for overburdening Africa with unnecessary debt, forcing him to come out and explain that the funds were not meant for “vanity projects” but rather infrastructure.
Kenya and China Communications Company were already in agreement with the construction of the 267km stretch between Naivasha and Kisumu, with the trip meant to iron out finer details but that did not happen.
CS Macharia also explained that they had carried the pre-drawn contract to Beijing during the China Africa Forum but the Chinese government needed a feasibility study conducted to establish its commercial viability.
The feasibility report was to be conducted not just for the Naivasha-Kisumu stretch, but instead from Mombasa to Kisumu.
Macharia, however, expressed confidence that the deal would be concluded before the end of September as the government would convince the Chinese to loosen their purse strings based on lessons learnt from the Mombasa-Nairobi line.
“We are very happy because these projections have been done. It is not like we are estimating the kind of revenues that will be generated. Already we know how many trains will be running.”
The proposed line is meant to reach the neighbouring landlocked Uganda to take over a huge chunk of haulage so as to make financial sense, especially as there are plans for a Tanzania-Rwanda line.
The proposal that would have seen Uganda and Kenya transport and finance ministers meet China Exim Bank executives flopped as the bank executives flew to Kampala and later Nairobi last year to carry out due diligence on the Uganda project.
