The Brazilian Development Bank will extend USD 1 billion in funding to construct a portion of the railway project that will connect Ethiopia and  South Sudan, an Ethiopian Foreign Ministry official said.

Brazil's Andrade Gutierrez Participacoes SA  will be contracted to build the railway link running from Addis Ababa, to Jimma about 439 kM to the southwest, Taye Atskeselassie, director general for the Americas at the ministry, said in an interview on May 24.

The Brazilian Development bank “is willing to finance the project,” he said after Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn met Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. “The technical side has been finalized, it’s only the financing part; it’s a matter of the details.” Construction will begin “soon,” he said.

EXIM Bank of China concluded a loan agreement worth nearly USD 3 billion for a railway project extending from Addis Ababa to the port of Doraleh in Djibouti, ERTA,a State-owned media reported last week.

The government of Turkey is also financing another route, while Ethiopia is negotiating with Russia and India to finance and build other railway projects, Ethiopian Railways Corporation said on April 26.

Ethiopia is seeking finance to construct 4,744KM of electric railway lines at a cost of 110.8 billion Ethiopian birr in a bid to develop an economic alternative for the transport of goods by road.

Source: Bloomberg