The Mauritanian House of Councilors approved a bill allowing the construction of a land road linking Tindouf and the Mauritanian city of Zouerate, during its meeting held this Wednesday.
Mauritania’s Minister of Equipment and Transport, Moktar Ahmed Yedaly, said during the review of the bill in the parliament’s economic committee that Algeria will guarantee the financing of the project.
Yedaly added that Mauritania will be responsible for facilitating legal, administrative and logistical aspects, as well as granting tax and customs exemptions necessary for the implementation of this project.
The Mauritanian government has also committed, under the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), to contribute to the supply of local materials necessary for the realization of the project, and to allow the companies involved in the aforementioned project to exploit them.
According to the decree, the Algerian government will undertake, through the Algerian Agency for International Cooperation for Solidarity and Development, the financing and implementation of the project.
The latter will cost about one billion US dollars, and the road will extend over 800 km.
The right to operate the road of Tindouf-Zouerate after its completion is granted to Algeria for a period of 10 years, according to the legal regime of concession, renewable after the entry into service.
The memorandum of understanding approved this Wednesday was signed on December 2021 in Algeria, by the former Mauritanian Minister of Equipment and Transport, Mohamedou Ahmadou Mhaimid, and his Algerian counterpart, Kamel Nasseri.
Zpuerat, a town in northern Mauritania, is the epicenter of iron ore mining, which the mining train transports to the Mauritanian Atlantic port of Nouadhibou.
The railway convoy, built by France in 1963, is the culmination of ore mining that began in the colonial period; the train is one of the longest in the world with three locomotive engines and 150 ore wagons.
The Zuerat-Nouadhibou railway line is laid out so as not to penetrate the territory of Morocco’s Western Sahara and only runs within Mauritanian frontiers.
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