Two Chinese construction companies are awarded two road construction contracts worth five Billion Birr by the Ethiopian Roads Authority (ERA). The roads to be constructed are in Eastern and Southern Ethiopia.
The companies are CGC Overseas Construction Group and China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group Co. Ltd. The earlier was awarded a 220 Kilometer asphalt road construction that will stretch from Dire Dawa to Dewalle and it was paid 3.99 Billion Birr.
On the other hand China Tiesiju is contracted to construct a 107 Kilometer asphalt road from Konso to Yabelo with a 1.1 Billion Birr payment.
The Dire Dawa – Dewalle road is planned to have 10 Meter carriageway in urban areas and 15 Meter in other places. The delivery date for this road is scheduled to be September 2017.
Consultancy of this road project is going to be carried out by Shandong XinQiDian Overseas Consulting Ltd Co.
This contract was concluded at ERA’s headquarter between the Authority’s Director General Zaid Woldegabriel, and CGC’s Deputy General Manager, Qin Lijing.
During the occasion, Ziad commented the construction will improve the road link with Djibouti and help to transport raw materials and finished products to and from the industrial zone soon to be constructed at Dire Dawa, as well as simplifying the traffic flow of the
route.
The Ethiopian government is said to finance only 15 percent of the total outlay, while the rest is going to be covered from a loan secured from the Export Import (EX-IM) Bank of China.
China Tiesiju is scheduled to deliver an asphalt concrete road that stretches from Konso to Yabelo in three years and five months.
Just like the other road project, the Konso – Yabelo road is going to have a 10 Meter carriageway in rural areas and 19 Meters in urban areas. The road includes 340 drainage pipes and five bridges, along with other structural works.
The 107 Kilometer road construction is going to be consulted by a joint venture of a local company, Omega Consulting Engineers Plc, and a Ugandan company, Prome Consultants Limited.
However, signing of the contract was put back because the contractor’s representative was absent.
According to Fortune, the two road projects are part of the Fourth Road Sector Development Program (RSDP IV) of the ERA, for which implementation costs are estimated to reach 125.3 billion Br. Out of this, federal projects are expected to take 84.5 Billion Birr while 14.4 Billion Birr and 26.4 Billion Birr is reserved for State and Woreda projects respectively.
The government formed the RSDP as part of the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP). The Program is responsible for the rehabilitation of of 728Km of trunk roads, the upgrading of 5,023Km of trunk and link roads, the construction of 4,331Km of new link roads, the heavy maintenance of 4,700Km of paved and gravel roads and routine maintenance of 85,649Km of road network.
Source: Fortune
