Nyusi inaugurates expanded rail line to South Africa

Maputo, 9 Jul (AIM) – The Mozambican rail network is set to increase the amount of freight handled annually from the 48 million tonnes recorded in 2019 to 83 million tonnes by the end of this year, according to President Filipe Nyusi.

Nyusi was speaking during the inauguration of the doubling of the track along the Ressano Garcia line, the line which runs from Maputo to the South African border.

This part of the line runs for 42 kilometres, from Secongene, in Moamba district, to the South African border. Work on doubling the track took about two years.

Over the past five years, according to Nyusi, the publicly owned ports and rail company, CFM, has invested over 600 million meticais (about 9.4 million dollars, at the current exchange rate) in infrastructures, technical equipment and human resources.

These investments results in expanding the Ressano Garcia line, and doubling its track. Nyusi said this was in implementation of the government’s five year plan form 2019-2024.

He praised CFM for its achievement, but demanded that the money invested should now result in profits for the company.

“What makes us proud is that CFM financed the line with its own funds”, he said. “Our pride will be all the greater when we manage to recover what we have invested”.

Doubling the track on the Ressano Garcia line, he added, “meets the demands made of the Mozambican port and rail system in recent years by the neighbouring countries, particularly South Africa”.

Nyusi believed that one of the advantages of doubling the track will be to ease the pressure on the EN4 motorway between Maputo and South Africa, caused by the road transport of South African minerals to the port of Maputo. He expected much of this traffic to switch from road to rail.

Nyusi thought it likely that the increased capacity of the Ressano Garcia line would reduce congestion on the road.

Nyusi also inaugurated a new passenger terminal in Maputo Central station, which could triple the daily number of passengers handled by the station, from 25,000 to 75,000.

Transport Minister Mateus Magala said the doubling of the capacity of the Ressano Garcia line, and the new passenger terminal correspond to “the vision of integrated development of the Maputo Corridor to meet the new challenges facing the country and the region”.

The two projects cost CFM the equivalent of 98 million US dollars.

(AIM)

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