The Ethio-Djibouti Railway earned more than $20 million from freight and passenger services between January and July 2019, the Ethiopian News Agency and APA News reported in August 2019.
A train at Mojo station on Ethiopia's standard gauge railway, photographed on February 1, 2023. (Nahom366 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) [file photo]
Freight trains brought in $19.9 million and passenger trains $537,400 over the period, and the passenger service carried 39,000 people, according to a report presented during a media tour of the railway and the Adama Industrial Park organized by the Chinese embassy in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian News Agency said.
Director-General Tilahun Sarka said the line moved about 800 trains and earned around $35 million in 2018, its first year of operation. In a July 2019 interview with the agency, he said the railway planned to double freight trips to four a day between Addis Ababa and Djibouti and aimed to carry 40 to 50 percent of the cargo then moved by truck.
Two freight trains carried 212 containers in a single trip of about 11 hours, a load that took about 100 trucks three days, Tilahun said. The 750-kilometer standard gauge line, built jointly by Ethiopia and Djibouti at a cost of about $4.2 billion, began operating on Jan. 1, 2018, and cut travel between the two capitals from three days to about 12 hours.
Addis Fortune later reported that the railway was running at a loss, with operating costs of about $70 million a year. It earned $40 million from passengers and cargo in 2019, while passenger numbers fell from 128,722 in 2018 to 84,073 in 2019, the paper said.
Sources: Ethiopian News Agency: EDR Secures Over 20m USD in Revenue, Ethiopian News Agency: Ethio-Djibouti Railway to Double Freight, Passenger Train Services, Addis Fortune