The Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC) has announced that the Dar es Salaam-Morogoro Phase 1 of the Standard Gauge Railway will start operations at the end of this month.
The whole project is almost complete with the construction of the Morogoro-Dodoma stretch having reached 82.2 percent and set for completion by December 2022, Director-General Masanja Kadogosa said.
The first and the second phase are all under the Turkish contractor Yapı Merkezi.
Mr Kadogosa did not, however, delve into the details regarding the first phase’s operations which is expected to use electric trains.
He spoke at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone for the Mkutopora-Dodoma Phase Three SGR construction that was graced by President Samia Suluhu Hassan.
According to Mr Kadogosa, the government of Tanzania has released Tsh609.6 billion ($261 million) out of the total of Tsh4. 6 trillion ($1.9 billion) for the construction of the 368 km project.
“In March 2021 President Samia Hassan Suluhu promised to finish the construction of SGR…Soon we might sign another contract for the construction of SGR Kigoma-Tabora.”
The Tanzania Standard Gauge Railway is a railway system, under construction, linking the country to the neighbouring countries of Rwanda and Uganda, and through these two, to Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as part of East African Railway Master Plan.
The new Standard Gauge Railway, is intended to replace the old, inefficient metre-gauge railway system
