TRANSPORT

TRANSPORT

SGR: A Catalyst to Kenya's Development

To his credit, President Kenyatta has taken a long-term view of the many infrastructure projects his administration is implementing across the country.

By George Sunguh

ig public infrastructure Binvestments have historically been received with cynicism due to the huge costs involved and the many years it may take for people to start realising the benefits. Henry Labouchere, a radical British MP, dismissed the Uganda Railway as a 'lunatic line' in his brutal 1896 speech in parliament opposing the project. “What it will cost no words can express;What is its object no brain can suppose;Where it will start from no one can guess;Where it is going nobody knows;What is the use of it none can conjecture;What it will carry there's none can define,” he said. Critics of President Uhuru Kenyatta's foremost legacy project, the standard gauge railway (SGR), often flag the Sh357 billion borrowed from China to build it. Low cargo volumes in the first few months of the launch of its freight service, attributed to transporters approaching it with caution, raised questions about whether it is value for money. The cynicism is understandable though. A KPMG study of public infrastructure projects in the UK, Brazil, India and South Africa found that even governments, under pressure to deliver within political cycles, tended to take a narrow view of their value. Their appraisal focused more on how much a project will cost or how it will be funded than the real economic benefits such as growth, jobs, land values and tax revenues.