ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia has reported it will receive $1 billion in funding from the Brazilian Development Bank to build a section of a railway that will be extended to connect to neighboring South Sudan, a Foreign Ministry official said. Andrade Gutierrez Participacoes SA of Brazil will build the link running from the capital, Addis Ababa, to Jimma about 439 kilometers (273 miles) to the southwest, Taye Atskeselassie, director general for the Americas at the ministry, said in an interview on May 24. The bank “is willing to finance the project," he said after Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn met Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. “The technical side has been finalized, it's only the financing part; it's a matter of the details." Construction will begin “soon," he said. Ethiopia, Africa's second-most populous nation, needs funding to build 4,744 kilometers of electrified railway lines at a cost of 110.8 billion birr ($5.9 billion) as it seeks to develop a cheaper alternative to moving goods by road. Economic growth may slow to 6.5 percent this year and next, compared with average growth of 8.7 percent over the past five years, according to the International Monetary Fund. It comes as China and Turkey had been pushing their own rail projects in the East African country. Experts on the ground have confirmed to Bikyanews.com that by bolstering the country's railway system it could help trigger an economic boom for the country that would allow people to travel easier throughout the country. Brazilian companies could build a 439-kilometer section of a route to oil-rich South Sudan and India is considering export financing for a line to a port in Djibouti, he said. “They want to come and invest in Ethiopia and get their return," the company said in the capital, Addis Ababa. Ethiopia, Africa's second-most populous nation, is building 4,744 kilometers of electrified railway lines at a cost of 110.8 billion birr ($5.9 billion) as it seeks to reduce road-transport costs constraining the continent's fastest growing non-oil producing economy over the past decade. Growth may slow to 6.5 percent this year and next, compared with average growth of 8.7 percent over the past five years, according to International Monetary Fund data. Ethiopian Railways plans to lay more than 2,000 kilometers of standard-gauge track during a five-year national growth plan that runs until mid-2015. China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. and China Railway Group Ltd. (390) are working on sections costing more than $1 billion each along Ethiopia's main 656- kilometer trade route from Addis Ababa to Djibouti. BN
