Transport CS justifies decision to award big projects to China

Cabinet Secretary for Transport and Infrastructure James Macharia has defended the decision by the government to award major infrastructure projects in the country to Chinese contractors.

Aside from the quality of their work, Macharia says the Chinese companies, mostly engaged in the construction of roads, railways and ports, offer bids that are a lot more competitive compared to others in the business.

Even as it seeks to develop the country’s infrastructure, the CS noted that the government does not want to spend more money than it has to. This, he explains, is the reason why Chinese contractors win majority of the bids.

“For any project, we go through a very competitive process. I will give you an example; we have this road between Kenol to Marawa (In Murang’a County) which was open for competitive bidding. Lot One from Kenol to Sagana is being done at a cost of about Kshs.7 billion.  From Sagana to Marwa it’s being done at Kshs.6 billion. The total cost is Kshs.13 billion.”

“But look at the bids that we got. When we opened the bids from Kenol to Sagana, where the winning bidder was at Ksh.7 billion, we had some European companies, which I will not mention, which had gone all the way to Kshs.18 billion,” the CS disclosed

“When people say we are giving contracts to Chinese, am I going to give away a project for the sake of not giving Chinese at Kshs.18 billion when it could have been done at 7 billion, same standards,”? he posed

But, besides the cost, what else makes Chinese contractors attractive for Kenya? According to the CS, the workmanship of Chinese construction firms is something to admire.

Macharia further noted that the speed at which they deliver a project is currently unmatched.

“First of all they are very very fast in terms of making decisions and implementation of projects.”

“Look at the projects we are doing. The Expressway was launched by the President in October 2019, now it’s 80 percent complete. Around the same time, we were discussing with another European consortium to do Rironi-Mau Summit Road. We started negotiations in September 2016; we have not finished negotiations until now.” he explained while shedding light on the matter amid claims that Chinese firms offer kickbacks to get the contracts.

As regards the ongoing Nairobi Expressway, Macharia disclosed that within two weeks of request for a possible Public Private Partnership (PPP) by the Kenyan government, the Chinese contractor sent a team to do a census of vehicles passing through Mombasa Road from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

“On that day, they counted about 30,000 vehicles. With those numbers, they fitted it into their financial model, and we confirm that indeed it can be a viable project under PPP. By October 2019 it was launched by the President.” He said of the speed at which the Chinese firm agreed to work on the expressway.

Seeing the progress made in the Kshs.65 Billion project, the CS indicated that this is the route the government intends to take in executing other big projects ‘where Kenya is not borrowing a single cent,’

“We are very happy that we are not leaving a burden to Kenyans in terms of debt for the expressway. It is going to solve a big problem of traffic, especially going to the airport,” he said

Related