You always fail to see the big picture as you focus on nitpicking. My point is simple...any projection done here in Africa where is data is spotty or missing or things are bound to dramatically change anytime is plain nonsense. It just doesn't pan out that way. This is young growing country that will need more SGR....and that is for future.
As long as we can afford..and we can afford 10b USD for the railway to Malaba...we should do it.How much has corruption cost this country? 10B? And yet the country is still functioning. SGR and Laptop is money well spent.
I just don't see how SGR can become white elephant. The old line served it purpose for many years and was later mismanaged in 90s. Nothing to do with "maintenance" culture but old corruption and mismanagement brought it down to it knees. Moi kleptomania just saw huge land reserves and brought once successful KR down..otherwise it been serving this country for nearly 100yrs.
Then Kibaki come in and ask world bank's to fix it. WB's IFC screw up by not doing proper due diligence on the south African conman RVR...and gave it 25 yrs concession. The idiot turned out had no capital to be running a rail line anywhere.Something we could not just quit because Ugandans would not agree to it.
The country faced a simple choice....wait for 20yrs to upgrade the MGR to SGR...or start another line of SGR to Nairobi...then from Nairobi it takes a completely new route towards narok, bomet, nyamira to sondu to ahero and kisumu....areas that never had the MGR.After RVR fiasco is done..GoK intend to upgrade the MGR to SGR. MGR to SGR wherever the line exist is done deal. We should be talking new rail line like LAPSET one.
Hold your horse...this is just the start.....in 10-20yrs we should be rolling more and more SGR like China is doing. More railways, more roads, more ports, more pipeline and more power stations....this is a country that is a toddler...not a developed country like USA or Japan or UK..that need to debate whether building this road or rail make economic sense..it by default here make economic sense.
If Safaricom had read those projections; they won't be raking in revenues of 200B and making profit of 40b now.
Sorry, I don't see how Safaricom comes into the picture; please explain. Nor do I see what one would consider a solid counter-argument to the report I referred to; please clarify.
Mombasa port has grown to become top 5 busiest port in Africa. You have cargo growth of more than double digit every year....this should mean we have to be build many more railways.
You seem to assume that all that cargo will automatically go onto the railway. That is not necessarily so.
SGR is something that will last more than 100yrs....so it can never become loss making in my opinion.
Try applying your logic to the existing rail lines. You forget the little matter of maintenance and that SGR is being built because Kenya has been unable to do that with existing rail lines. Also, as a rule, profit and loss are determined by more than mere existence.
