Rift Valley Railways is to spend $62 million buying new wagons and restoring old ones to help it win a bigger share of the region's freight market, the Kenyan firm said on Thursday. Owned by, among others, Kenyan infrastructure firm TransCentury and Egyptian group Citadel Capital , RVR, which operates the Kenya-Uganda railway, plans to nearly double capacity on every train to 1,500 tonnes. Along with track renewal to allow trains to move goods faster, RVR hopes the investment will help it to raise its share of freight to 35 percent from 4 percent in the next 2-1/2 years. "We will be able to run bigger capacity trains, thereby improving our loading capacity and reducing the operation's transit times," executive chairman Brown Ondego said. Rehabilitation of the rail network, which runs between Kenya and Uganda, is viewed as critical to expanding trade across the east African region and is estimated to reduce transport costs by up to a third. It mainly transports maize, wheat and steel. RVR's annual share of freight that goes through the port of Mombasa is 1.7 million tonnes, with the rest being moved by lorries over poor roads, which causes delays and drives up costs. Reuters
