Tanzania is to receive 264 freight wagons to improve cargo flows on its booming standard gauge railway (SGR).

State-owned Tanzania Railway Corporation (TRC) said it had bought the rolling stock from Chinese train-maker CRRC International as part of a $130m order for 1,430 wagons.

A TRC spokesperson told the Tanzanian Daily News that the wagons had left port in China, and would arrive in the middle of next month. He said they would be “a major boost to Tanzania’s logistics sector”.

The shipment consists of 200 container wagons and 64 others designed to accommodate loose cargo.

Tanzania’s $10bn SGR is an electrified medium-speed line that will eventually connect the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam with the densely populated Great Lake states of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.

A 726km section of the line, running from Dar to the administrative capital of Dodoma, was built by a joint venture between Yapi Merkezi of Turkey and Mota-Engil of Portugal. Construction broke ground in April 2017, and passenger services began in June.

The line has cut the time taken to travel between Dar and Dodoma from 10 hours to 3.5. According to Kitila Mkumbo, a minister of state, the passenger element of the SGR has transported 645,421 passengers between June and September.

As well as the SGR wagons, TRC has bought 400 more for carrying general cargo such as sugar, cement, salt, cotton, tobacco and coffee, and 600 for shipping containers.

There are also other wagons for petroleum tanks, pipes, wood, metal and cattle.

TRC is working on modernising more than 2,500km of its network. By David Rogers, GCR