(Yicai Global) Aug. 2 – A unit of Power Construction Corporation of China has inked a USD969 million subcontract with the joint venture between Egypt's Arab Contractors and Elsewedy Electric for a Tanzanian hydropower project, PowerChina said in a statement yesterday. 

This is the third major engineering contract Beijing-based PowerChina's Sinohydro unit has landed this year. It earlier signed the Guinea-Kukutanba Hydropower Project with a contract value of CNY5.4 billion and the Indonesian Kayan Hydropower Project in a deal worth CNY9.2 billion.

This project mainly includes design and construction of the main dam, water diversion system, temporary roads, and 50 percent of the construction camp buildings under the Egyptian prime contractors. Construction will take 42 months to complete. 

The completed facility is for the benefit of benefit Dodoma-based Tanzania Electric Supply, industry news portal Hydroworld reported. Tanzania's government green-lighted construction of the facility in January. Arab Contractors won the bid in October to design and build the 134-meter high dam and power plant, which has a projected reservoir length of 100 kilometers, and will inundate around 1,350 square km. The dam height is about 134 meters. The project will more than treble Tanzania's current 562-megawatt installed hydropower capacity.

The power station will cost more than double the government's USD3 billion forecast and may go as high as USD9.85 billion, per the Hydroworld report.

The Tanzanian Rufiji hydropower plant lies in the lower reaches of the Rufiji River in Stiegler's Gorge, about 230 kilometers west of the waterway's confluence with the Indian Ocean and about 35km from the Fuga Station along the TAZARA Railway that links the key Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam with Zambia's Central province.

Editor: Ben Armour