Nile| Egypt says: Ethiopia's dam will wait for the Experts' Panel

(Daniel Berhane)

Egyptian Minister claims he can not say for sure that the Renaissance dam project has negative effects “on Egypt’s share of the Nile water”.

Minister Irrigation and Water Resources, Dr. Mohamed Bahaa El-Din, made the remark to Egyptian reporters during his visit to a water project on Sunday.

Dr. El-Din said that he awaits for the findings of the International Panel of Experts submits its report next month, noting that the Panel includes international experts and will decide the potential pros and cons expected of the construction of the dam.

The minister added that based on the Panel’s report Egypt and Sudan will start negotiations with Ethiopia.

The negotiations would be to minimize the negative impacts, if any, and to optimize of the potential positive impacts, which were mentioned by the former Ethiopian Prime Minister, as well as to work another parallel project to avoid negative impacts of the Renaissance dam.

In a separate remark to an Egyptian paper published on Sunday, Dr. El-Din claimed that Ethiopia will not build the dam until the the Panel completes its work.

He said that what is being reported about the Renaissance dam construction is “just digging the foundations and related works”.

The irrigation minister also claimed that the Panel will complete its work at the end of May next year.

Egypt and Sudan are working in coordination to discuss with Ethiopian officials for clarifications of the negative impacts of the dam, thus to avoid them.

It is to be recalled that, Ethiopian Foreign Minister, Tedros Adhanom (Ph.D.), said on February 27 that the construction will not be put on hold no matter what, even though the government is ready to make some adjustments, if found necessary depending on the findings of the report.

Ethiopian officials recently reported that the project is 19.6% complete and works are underway to divert the water from the natural course before the rain season starts. The

The diversion works are said to include “a 120 m wide, 1,100 m long diversion channel excavated on the right bank of the river, discharging wet season flows (14, 700 m3/s) and 4 box culverts located at the dam foundation level on the left bank of the river, capable to discharging the dry season flows (2,700 m3/s).”

The water diversion work will be followed by “the construction of the the concrete gravity dam, a gated spillway and rock-hill Saddle Dam with an emergency spillway in correspondence of its right abutment”.

Last week, China Electric Power Equipment and Technology Co.Itd. signed an agreement for the construction of the power transmissions of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Chinese loan will cover 85% of the $1.2 bln USD cost of the work, which is to scheduled to be completed in two years.
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(Compiled from various Arabic sites of Egypt, with the help of Google translation service)

Daniel Berhane

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