{UAH} Ping pong on Uganda SGR - Editorial - www.theeastafrican.co.ke

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/editorial/-/434752/2168982/-/8ldxbi/-/index.html

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Ping pong on Uganda SGR - Editorial

Increasingly, Uganda's search for a builder for its proposed 1,600-kilometre standard gauge railway is beginning to mirror the acrimony that preceded the selection of a contractor for the 600MW Karuma hydropower station last year.

Then as now, the tug of war involved Chinese firms. After a ping-pong match that lasted two years, the government handed the 183MW Isimba power station to China Water and Electric Corporation.

While this may have put an end to the sibling rivalry and allowed work to commence, it is doubtful that Uganda got a better deal.

This week, elements in the Works Ministry were knocking on the Solicitor General's door, trying to get a new memorandum signed for the SGR project.

The SG's office correctly advised them that it was not possible to enter into a new MoU without terminating an existing one. There is no doubt such machinations will continue but they expose Uganda to unnecessary risk.

For one, they favour a contractor that is not known to have submitted a feasibility study to date.

The price of failure by this firm would be high not just for Uganda but for its neighbours, which are counting on the expeditious execution of the Ugandan leg to connect them to what is, by far, East Africa's most ambitious infrastructure project.

Ping pong on Uganda SGR - Editorial - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/editorial/-/434752/2168982/-/8ldxbi/-/index.html