Abuja light rail project to gulp N150bn

NEWS:

BY EVEREST AMAEFULE

                               FCT Minister, Senator Bala Mohammed

The Abuja light rail project will gulp N150bn, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Senator Bala Mohammed, has said.

Mohammed, who spoke at the construction site at the beginning of the Good Governance Projects Tour initiated by the Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, also said the project would create one million direct and indirect jobs.

While the Federal Government has secured $500m loan from the Chinese EXIM bank to fund the project being handled by the China Civil Engineering Construction Company, the government will bear 15 per cent of the cost.

The FCT minister also said the Federal Government had paid its counterpart funding of N22bn.

Mohammed also said the Federal Government would spend N178m on the resettlement of villages affected by the rail project.

He said the coverage of the rail project had been scaled down from 60 to 45 kilometres because of budgetary constraints.

The minister said the project conceived in 2009 had been delayed because of financial constraints but expressed appreciation to President Goodluck Jonathan for facilitating the borrowing of $500m from the China EXIM bank.

He added that with the new funding mechanism, the project would be completed within the second quarter of 2015.

With five kilometres of the rail track already completed, the project has attained 22 per cent completion.

The Project Manager, CCECC, Mr. Yuan Yong, assured the FCT Administration that with the new funding arrangement, the project would be delivered on schedule in 2015.

Speaking at the event, Maku said the Abuja rail project would connect with the nationwide railway project that would crisscross the six geopolitical zones of the country.

The media practitioners also visited the National Space Research and Development Centre and also inspected the Abuja Airport road being constructed by Julius Berger.

The airport road project has attained 80 per cent completion rate. Mohammed said the project required some financial intervention from Federal Government to ensure completion.