Rwanda and South Sudan’s Standard Gauge Railway ambitions could suffer significant delays as Uganda gets trapped in a bureaucratic conflict pitting President Museveni and the Solicitor-General on the one hand and junior Minister for Works John Byabagambi on the other.

While the president wants a bankable SGR project ready for soliciting finances in six months’ time, Mr Byabagambi, who is also chair to the SGR regional committee, insists on pulling out of existing agreements, something the Solicitor-General warns could lead to unnecessary litigation and delays.

At the end of their June 25, 2013 tripartite summit, presidents Uhuru Kenyata, Paul Kagame, Yoweri Museveni and Salva Kiir, set a March 2018 deadline for completion of the regional SGR lines and Kenya has already awarded a contract but amid controversy.

In a February 19 brief to Mr Byabagambi, President Museveni directed that construction of Uganda’s SGR network will be undertaken by the two firms — China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) and China Harbour Engineering Corporation (CHEC) — with both companies working with the UPDF Engineering Brigade.

In the same brief Mr Byabagambi was instructed to engage an independent consultant to carry out feasibility studies “and prepare bankable SGR projects within six months.”

According to Museveni, those studies would form the basis for further decisions, leading to contract award and should be availed to other financiers. The ministries of finance, the UPDF and the AG’s chambers were to work jointly towards fulfilling the conditions for financing.

Relevant ministries were also required to work with their counterparts in Kenya, Rwanda and South Sudan to “ensure SGR is done as regional project and “we solicit financing from China Exim Bank as a regional bloc.

Mr Byabagambi, however, said that it is necessary for the memorandum of understanding Uganda signed with CCECC, and a separate one the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces signed with CHEC to be set aside to allow harmonisation of the project with regional partners.

“We are going to retender so that we get a contractor who will work in harmony with the contractors working in the other countries. That does not necessarily mean that the contractors whose MoUs are cancelled will not be allowed to compete in the new round,” he said.

That effectively opens a new bidding round for the project, pushing it back more than a year. With both the Sudan and Rwanda sections depending on Uganda, delays here, could stymie the regional network.

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Mr Byabagambi says he will use a clause in the document that allows either party to serve a three months’ notice to the other before pulling out of the deal. Mr Byabagambi’s position runs counter to advice from the Solicitor General’s office.

Replying to a February 5, letter in which Works Permanent Secretary Alex Okello, seeks legal guidance on how the MoU with CCECC could be terminated, the Solicitor General referred to Museveni letter to Mr Byabagambi warning that any move to terminate the MoU would delay the project and expose Uganda to costs.