Portuguese Construction Company Mota-Engil SGPS SA and Turkish builder Yapi Merkezi Insaat VE Sanayi As have won US$1.2 rail deal in Tanzania allowing them to bid for additional railway projects in the country.
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Tanzania’s government plans to issue a tender for a new railway project in April after signing a contract with the two companies to construct 300 kilometers (127 miles) of track,
“We are very interested and it’s a topic that we will begin discussing with the government,” Manuel Antonio Mota, chief executive officer of Mota’s Africa unit, said in an interview. “There are tenders in progress for that.”
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Tanzania is taking into consideration railway projects including a 2,200-kilometer Central Railway Line from Dar es Salaam to Kigali, the capital of the bordering Rwanda, with two other lines stemming off to Musongati in Burundi and to Mwanza port on the shores of Lake Victoria to service Ugandan shippers. It approximates that project will cost US $ 161 billion.
The government also has plans to put up one more line in the south, linking the port town of Mtwara to coal projects in Liganga and Mchuchuma for almost US $ 161 billion.
The government has made financial arrangements of about US $447 million in the financial year through June to assist in funding the railways and will raise loans for the residual financing; Mbarawa told the media at the signing ceremony. Mota and Yapi, which presented a dual proposal for the contract, were awarded the deal because it was the sole bid received, he said.
“Forty corporations put in a request for tender documents but just one company returned the documents,” Mbarawa said. Yapi and Mota own 50 percent each of the group that was awarded the contract.
The deal was facilitated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-day visit to Tanzania last month to reinforce business ties between the two countries, Yapi Vice Chairman Erdem Arioglu said during an interview.
Yapi is “extremely interested” in tendering for further rail projects in the nation, Arioglu said.
Work on the projects is anticipated to begin in the next six weeks and take around 30 months to complete, Mbarawa said.
