When during an interview with NTV last week Deputy President William Ruto claimed that grandiose SGR project would break even by the end of the year and that it would fully pay its debt by 2020, many Kenyans wondered just how?
It beats one why NTV journalist Mark Masai did not follow up to challenge the Deputy President to clarify and substantiate the claims that appear ridiculous.
Economist David Ndii, whose amongst the World’s most influential economists, has already accused Ruto of “lying through the teeth”.
Ndii has been upfront that the project was doomed to fail from the word go and has reiterated based on its high economic cost that does not match its socioeconomic benefits.
“SGR does not have the capacity to become viable. It can only carry 8.76 millions tonnes with max revenue of Sh20 million interest. Its a bridge to nowhere… the Jubilee govt is playing politics,” Ndii observes.
The main challenge, however, is that the SGR cargo trains do not even meet their targets as placed on paper.
The government has forced traders to use the SGR in transporting cargo from Mombasa to Nairobi but the numbers still remain low.
The cargo train has a capacity of 216 containers, and with seven trips per day, could carry about ten thousand containers per day
Leave a Reply