The board of the Public-Private Partnership, which is chaired by Minister of Finance Ahmed Shide, approved the construction of the country's largest depot through the joint investment of the government and the private sector. Planned a few years ago, financial constraints have so far delayed the project.

Approved three weeks ago, the project was tabled to the board after the Ministry of Finance reviewed the proposal and endorsed it for a final blessing from the board. An Australian consultancy firm that was hired to conduct a feasibility assessment has estimated the cost of Dukem Depot to be 145 million dollars. The construction of the Depot is expected to take three years.

Proposed to be built in Dukem town, Oromia Regional State, the Depot will rest on 10ha of land. It will have a capacity of storing 300 million litres of jet fuel, benzene and diesel fuel. Upon completion, the terminal is expected to boost the nation's emergency reserves from 36 days of supply to 65.

The Depot, which will be the first in the country that stores jet fuel, will have 12 tanks that each have a storage capacity of 25 million litres. Two-thirds of the tanks will reserve diesel fuel, while the remaining will contain jet fuel and benzene. Each tank is five times larger than the nation's current largest depot, which stores five million litres.

The Ethiopian Petroleum Supply Enterprise, which has been handling the project for the past three years, could not proceed with the construction due to budgetary restrictions, according to Tadesse Hailemariam, CEO of the Enterprise, which imported four million litres of fuel in the last fiscal year, spending 2.4 billion dollars.

"We requested another financing model from the Ministry," Tadesse told Fortune. "We also stressed that the project needs priority since it is a national security matter."

Currently, the country has 13 terminals with a total capacity of reserving 367 million litres of fuel. The Enterprise, which was established half a century ago and has branches in Djibouti and Sudan, built a 174-million-Br depot at Awash Sebat Kilo to store 30 million litres two years ago.

Dukem Depot is part of the Enterprise's Strategic Depot Construction Master Development Programme that also aims to construct an additional depot in Dire Dawa. Expected to store 65pc of the country’s fuel consumption needs, Dukem Oil Depot will be equipped with an automated control system and can load 20 oil trucks at a time, each carrying 45,000lt.

To deliver fuel products quickly, the plan calls for connecting the Depot with Ethio-Djibouti Railway. The trains' electric power will be disconnected while passing through the Depot's premises, and they will instead use their diesel engines for safety purposes, according to the plan.

Following the inception of the project three years back, the Enterprise hired SMEC International PTY, an Australian firm, two years ago for a quarter of a billion Birr to prepare the engineering design, develop a tender document, help the Enterprise hire a contractor, supervise the contractor and commission the project.