ADDIS ABABA, July 14 (Xinhua) — The Ethiopian government has disclosed its plan to increase the country's road infrastructure coverage to 245,000 km within the coming ten years period.
The statement was made by Habtamu Tegegn, head of the Ethiopian Roads Administration, as he emphasized that more than 22,000 km of roads are currently under construction throughout Ethiopia, state-run Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported late Wednesday.
The East African country has undertaken in excess of 160,000 km of roads during the past 25 years, ENA quoted Tegegn as saying.
He said the Ethiopian government is exerting concerted efforts in order to increase the country's road coverage to 245,000 km within the next ten years.
Tegegn, however, emphasized that there are challenges with road projects not being completed on time. He attributed the challenges to border enforcement, insecurity and contractors' inadequacies.
In addition to emphasis on augmenting the country's road coverage, the Ethiopian government has also recently engaged in modernizing the country's transportation system.
As part of the efforts to modernize the country's transportation system, authorities in Ethiopia's capital of Addis Ababa in March this year concluded a 29.17 million U.S. dollars' worth of two agreements with two Chinese firms.
Ethiopia hopes the two transportation modernization agreements will bring about fundamental transport logistics improvement in the national capital, through the integration of state-of-the-art information communication technology (ICT) systems. ■
