More wagons point to fresh push for SGR use in Kenya
Sunday March 10 2024
The newly acquired 50 Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) Freight Service Wagons at Port Reitz Freight Station in Mombasa, Kenya in this photo taken on February 5, 2024. PHOTO | KEVIN ODIT | NMG
Some 430 wagons arrived in Kenya early this week, barely two weeks after another 50 were commissioned at the port of Mombasa, signalling the government’s new bid to boost railway cargo volumes.
Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) says this new batch will raise its wagons to 1,900 and help in meeting its target to ferry more than 11 million tonnes annually to Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo via SGR from Mombasa to Naivasha and to Malaba via the metre gauge railway.
Shippers say they support use of railway as a complement to road transport but only if it brings reliability and efficiency in the supply chain.
Read: Kenya buys 300 SGR wagons
“After bringing in the additional wagons, KPA needs to ensure adequate trucks to enable delivery of SGR cargo from vessel discharge to loading zones. They also need to deploy more equipment at loading zones to coordinate both loading and return offloading of empty containers,” said Shippers Council of Eastern Africa (SCEA) head of policy and advocacy Agayo Ogambi.
“The port is not a storage facility and we will provide necessary support to ensure cargo is evacuated on time,” said KPA communication officer Dave Buchere.
The new wagons have capacity of 65 tonnage and above, compared with the old, 36-tonne ones.
Kenya has been working to ensure that the SGR hauls enough cargo to enable it repay the close to $5 billion debt taken from China to construct the railway line from Mombasa to Naivasha.
Read: Kenya spends record $471m on China debt in first quarter
According to the take-and-pay agreement, the KPA undertook to consign to Kenya Railways a set volume of freight and cargo in order to collect adequate funds to pay the SGR loan.
The current regime seems to be quietly reinstating the Uhuru Kenyatta government directive that cargo be evacuated to the hinterland by SGR, which led to court battles.
Transporters and clearing agents have also opposed the move by the Ministry of Transport to provide end-to-end logistics services, pushing the agents out of business.
During the election campaigns in 2022, the Kenya Kwanza leaders opposed the directive implement ex-hook railage. KPA and Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen now say KRC will work to ensure more cargo is hauled through the SGR.
In the new plan, cargo can be delivered to the customer’s doorstep from the Port of Mombasa as either Through Bill of Lading (TBL) or merchant haulage (Non-TBL), an extra cost that traders have opposed.