DAR ES SALAAM, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania's standard gauge railway (SGR) linking the commercial hub of Dar es Salaam to the eastern region of Morogoro will begin trial operations in January 2024, a senior official has said recently.
The trial runs will be for passenger trains only and will commence after approval from the Land Transport Regulatory Authority, Minister of Transport Makame Mbarawa said.
Mbarawa made the remarks on Friday during a news conference in Dar es Salaam at the conclusion of a one-day meeting of transport ministers from the Central Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency, which brought together ministers from Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi.
Masanja Kadogosa, the director-general of the Tanzania Railway Corporation, said that construction of the 300-kilometer SGR had reached 97 percent completion by June this year, and the first trial run by project engineers proved successful.
Tanzania is constructing a total of 2,102 km of SGR, linking it to neighboring Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, thus making the East African country a regional business and transportation hub. ■