Former Kakamega senator Dr Boni Khalwale has poured cold water on the productivity of the Standard Gauge Railway.
In a live interview updated in NTV's official Twitter handle on Thursday morning, Khalwale noted that the railway project would have been beneficial to Kenyans if it were to run through Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Sudan.
The Kakamega ex-senator rubbished the possibility of the project paying off the loans borrowed from China to construct the same by ferrying goods from Naivasha to Mombasa.
"SGR would be profitable if it runs all the way from Mombasa, Kampala, Kigali and finally to Juba. If we think that it will pay for itself by carrying goods from Mombasa to Naivasha, its a lie!," argued Khalwale during the NTV interview.
The former Ikolomani MP opined that the project should not have been conceptualized by the Kenyan government alone. He asserted that it should have been made an East African project for it to become 'more profitable'.
"According to me, the SGR should not have been developed as a national project but as an East African project that would have been more profitable," he said.
Construction of phase one of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) which runs from Mombasa to Nairobi at a cost of Ksh.327 billion has been completed and it is currently operational. The construction of phase two is currently ongoing.
A loan used to finance the construction of the project was secured from China's Exim Bank.