The Ethiopian Railways Corporation (ERC) plans to expand public services, lessen project delays, and increase resource utilization by presenting opportunities for public private partnership (PPP) to take part in railway.

The corporation’s CEO, Dr. Berhanu Beshah said though Ethiopia successfully constructed the first Light Rail Transit in East Africa and the Addis Ababa-Djibouti cross-border electrified standard gauge railway, the country still struggles with serious challenges including lack of capacity noting that “we need to further strengthen our capacity in planning, implementation, and maintaining various projects as well as expanding existing projects, and building new partnership to realize our ambitions.”

The CEO said the assistance the corporation gets from partners will help the country to accomplish the vision for a modern national railway and will contribute significantly to East Africa’s regional transport and communication networks.

“To date we have performed feasibility studies, alignment selection and verification, detailed design, final design integration, and related environmental and social impact assessment works for about 2,300 km of standard gauge electrified railway.” Accordig to Dr. Berhanu, the corporation is planning to have Transit Oriented Development in Addis Ababa and logistics parks and railway tourism projects nationwide.

Simegn Wube, state minster of public enterprises, said privatization plan of some of the public enterprises was declared recently by the government including the railway infrastructure or their engagement in joint ventures with domestic and foreign investors.

“The summit, therefore, takes place at an opportune moment as we are moving towards privatization of major enterprises and new forms of partnership in the railway sector,” she said.

The State Minister urged the participating companies to consider partaking in Ethiopia’s fast-growing railway sector.

Source: Ethiopian News Agency