Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni has said the country could rely on income from future oil exports to finance an $8 billion railway if funding talks with China fails.

Uganda plans to build an $8 billion worth rail line that would run from the Kenyan border to the capital Kampala, then north to South Sudan and west to the oil fields, it is projected to speed up the freight transport in the region as currently most of the freights go by road.

Uganda prefers to get the funds for the project from China, like Kenya has done, as against the tapping international market, seen as more expensive. but Museveni, who confirmed that his country was in talks with China over funding the project, said if the Asian powerhouse don’t offer financing the Uganda would do it with revenue from its oil which is expected to start flowing in from 2017.

“Remember we have our oil, which we shall start harvesting in 2017, and that money will deal with these projects – railway and electricity … China or no China, we shall build that railway,” Reuters quotes Museveni as saying on Monday on the sidelines of an African investment conference in London.

Uganda has commercially viable quantities of oil estimated at 1.4 billion barrels and has signed up to a proposal with Kenya, who also discovered oil recently, to build a pipeline running to a planned oil terminal on the northern Kenyan coast. In April 2013, the Ugandan government entered into a partnership with British Tullow Oil, French Total China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to build a refinery with initial an capacity of 30,000 bpd which can rise to 60,000 bpd.