TANZANIAINVEST has been interviewing Akashambatwa Mbikusita Lewanika, newly appointed Managing Director of TAZARA, the Tanzania-Zambia railway, tabo learn about the company’s current situation, its development strategy and the role of the line in the development of trade in the region.
Akashambatwa Mbikusita Lewanika Managing Director of TAZARA |
TI: You have very recently been appointed at the head a rail line paramount for trade and economic development of the country, but with a controversial history. How do you feel undertaking such challenging task?
At the time the project of a railway linking
But it is now quite obvious that such assumption has been disproved over the years and that the economic demand for Tazara is higher than ever imagined and it is way above the its current capacity.
Right now we are in a situation where both the import and export cargo are crying out for Tazara to increase its capacity and to operate more efficiently, to the benefit not only of Tanzania and Zambia, but also Congo, Burundi, Malawi and other countries in eastern and southern Africa.
Now I am confident that given the political will of the
TI: Which are the main issues to tackle to ensure the success of Tazara and what is your strategy to overcome them?
There is great deficiency in the number of locomotive and the number of wagons that we have.
Even in the present stage of the infrastructure of Tazara, if we simply had more locomotive and wagons and power we would be able to do significantly more and to satisfy our customers better.
While we are very grateful to the Chinese government and eagerly anticipating the infusion of the assistance related to the 14th protocol which has just been signed we are focusing our minds to do the best with what we have.
Accordingly our workshops are working day and night to ensure that we have a minimum number of locomotives at least operating so that on a good day we have 14 locomotives operating.
In addition to that, because of the backlog of indebtedness and the low capacity utilization it means we are faced with serious liquidity problems by which we are unable to finance the day-to-day operations of the company.
So as newly appointed Managing Director I am really pushing to ensure that whatever revenues we have are directed towards those areas of expenditure that more greatly assure the locomotive capacity and the number of wagons so that we can increase our revenues.
Of late the revenue achievements of Tazara at best have been averaging 3 million USD per month which still is not sufficient to comfortably cover the day-to-day operations costs.
So our immediate task is to see if we can raise our monthly revenues to at least 5 million USD.
TI: What makes rail transportation so crucial in
On the other hand the railway transport has an advantage as it wiser to use it in certain exports and imports.
For instance whatever gains we are having in fixing our roads, this is being destroyed by transporting on roads bulk equipment like copper.
So if the railway reaches its desired capacity it does not really take away what is needed on the road network but it is providing an opportunity for the road network to only deal with the type of transport that damages roads less.
Otherwise the vision for the entire transport sector is to complement each other {xtypo_quote_right}the vision for the entire transport sector is to complement each other{/xtypo_quote_right} for instance we envisage that there will be need for a railway track of about 170 km joining Mpulungu in the south of lake Tanganika to Tazara which will be able to offload goods that are going by lake to or from Burundi towards the south or towards Dar es Salaam.
So in planning our transport infrastructure we have to plan in all sub-sectors.
TI: What is the role of Tazara in the regional development?
AL: Tazara is not only very centrally located as it links Tanzania to Zambia but it also links to the Zambian railways system which links to the Congolese railway system which in turn is linked to the Angolan railway system.
So we anticipate good prospects for the future for a continuous railway link from the Atlantic Ocean in
The linkage with Zambia also link with Durban and Cape Town in South Africa and there is also the possibility in the future to link this railways network to Namibia as well and we believe that the railway system could complement the road infrastructure and particularly for certain goods, such as mining products that are not suitable and very economically viable for road and air transport.
So we think Tazara holds great prospects of being a crucial facilitator of enhanced and more mutually beneficial involvement of
TI: Will the
So the concern is that the loan is too spaced out whereby we would be reaching the undesirable situation of not optimising the use of our assets and hence our capacity.
We need to operate with a minimal number of wagons been serviced at the same time so yes this is a major intervention which holds great potential to rehabilitate Tazara and enhancing its operations.
TI: Minister Kawambwa has highly evaluated
This attitude has been there through the history of Tazara and is still needed for the future so we welcome that.
Not only that but now some of the businesses demanding Tazara services actually come from
So in essence enhancing the capacity and the efficiency of Tazara is actually removing a major bottleneck to failed expansion of
TI: What is your opinion on the new South-South development cooperation model undertaken with
The world now admires
TI: What is your message to the Chinese government official and businessmen looking at
AL: If our message to the western world is that we prefer trade than aid, our message for China is that we want to go beyond trade and to investment now so that the good that we are exporting are valued added here, trough investments.
Even at this moment there are Chinese companies in