The Ethiopian Roads Authority (ERA) has made a bold move by awarding two local firms contracts for construction of asphalt roads in Ethiopia. This is a first for Ethiopia local contractors to be awarded road asphalting projects from scratch since before, they were being involved in making gravel roads or upgrading gravel ones to asphalt.
The two contractors awarded the road construction projects are Sunshine Construction Plc and Macro General Contractor Trading Plc. The road construction projects will be conducted at a cost of US$ 110m. The agreements were signed by the General Manager of Marco, Elias Mamo, the General Director of ERA, Zaid Woldegabriel and the president of Sunshine Samuel Tafesse.
Sunshine Construction Plc will be given US$ 50m for the construction of the Morocho-Dimtu-Bitena road which is 60.8 Km long. In this phase, the contractor will construct the asphalt road at seven meters wide in urban areas and six meters wide in rural areas with overpasses, crossing bridges, and drainage systems.
After the successful completion of this phase within a time frame of 2 years and 5 months, another 48.3 Km of road will be constructed by A Chinese contractor, Hunan Hunda at a cost of US$ 55m.
Macro General Contractor Trading Plc, on the other hand, will be given US$ 63m for construction of the Adaba-Angetu road in Oromia. The road construction will involve a 100 Km stretch and will connect Bale with the Eastern Arsi Zone, and will be ready for use in three years.
To date the ERA has rehabilitated, upgraded, constructed and maintained 41,664km of roads as of June 2013, at a cost of US$ 4.1bn, out of which US$ 3bn was on federal roads. Earlier on, it was indicated that US$331m would be used for roads expansion in Addis Ababa city.
