The federal Government is currently making efforts to obtain loans from Europe following the delay being experienced in China.
Loans from China have been deployed in the rail infrastructure, regarded as one of the major achievements of the current administration.
Earlier in the week, reports emanated that the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, said Nigeria was experiencing difficulties getting loans from China.
When asked to confirm the authenticity of the reports after Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meeting, Amaechi said, “Actually, that is why there is a delay. We were waiting on the Chinese to give us the loans we applied for and till today, they’ve not replied. They kept delaying us – will the delay extend our tenure? The answer is no. We’ve gone to Standard Chartered Bank and while they’ve done financial closure, they’ve approved some level of funding.
“We are also pursuing Port Harcourt-Maiduguri line with Standard Chartered Bank. The Lagos-Kano, part of it will come from Standard Chartered Bank, and part of it will come from some commercial banks in China.”
When asked to disclose the amount of money to be sourced from Europe, he said, “I don’t have that figure here, I have to go back to the office.
“Remember that we have about three railway projects that are yet to start construction and they include the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri, Kano-Maradi and then the Abuja-Warri.”
The minister added that the consultancy services were approved with the total cost of $183.7 million for the contractors including GIX Engineers Infrastructure Excellence/Yaroso & Partnership Ltd, Core Consulting Engineering Plc. That’s for Abuja to Warri.
“For the consultancy services for supervision of Port Harcourt-Maiduguri Railway, with branch lines to Bonny Deep Seaport and Port Harcourt Industrial Park and then to Owerri. We have Kyari Consults SDMBHD/Jamood Global Services Limited at $97.5 million. The first one is $38.4 million.”
“Consultancy services for the supervision of Kano-Katsina-Jibia-Maradi Rail-line to TEAM (Technics Engineering Architecture Marketing Nigeria Limited) and that is for $47,670,000 million. All of them are for a period of 36 months.
“The second one is that the cabinet approved a concessionairing agreement for the Ministry of Transportation to concession the Onitsha River Port to a company called Inversal Elysium Consortium. They are to manage the river port for 30 years.”
