Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy has outlined critical reforms to revive South Africa’s logistics and freight rail sector which has been underperforming in recent years.
Analysts have estimated that these inefficiencies cost the economy as much as R1 billion a day.
“Last week, Transnet issued a R17bn concession contract to five private sector partners to fund, construct and operate several liquid bulk terminals at the Port of Richards Bay,” Creecy said on Thursday during the Rand Merchant Bank Think Summit 2025.
She said the government had been collaborating with stakeholders to address bottlenecks and inefficiencies to turn around the fortunes of the rail and ports logistics systems.
“Business and Transnet have cooperated to improve maintenance and security on key freight corridors and hope to find ongoing short-term mechanisms to promote investment in the rail network while the longer-term reform agenda rolls out.
“Transnet will put in bids to the budget facility for infrastructure at National Treasury for maintenance and refurbishment of the network and selected terminals.
“Joint initiatives managed to increase freight volumes to 161 million tons per annum in March 2025. While this is still a long way from our 2030 target of 220 million tons, it’s an improvement on past performance,” Creecy said.
Transnet has developed a recovery plan aimed at stabilising port and rail volumes.
The establishment of “war rooms” for specific corridors and commodities has allowed Transnet and the private sector to collaborate and share expertise and confront challenges such as derailments and unplanned maintenance.
“As part of Transnet’s recovery plan, replacement and refurbishment of critical equipment such as cranes, rubber-tyred gantry (RTG) cranes, straddles and haulers is happening in our ports.
“Continued collaboration with original equipment manufacturers has ensured that spare parts for essential machinery can be sourced when necessary. This has resulted in improvements at our ports where ship waiting times and queuing times for trucks have decreased,” Creecy said.
Close collaboration with the fruit growers’ association and logistics stakeholders in Cape Town has reduced delays experienced last year.
And in Richards Bay, the port and municipality have established a truck holding facility that has moved trucks from the N2 and port access roads to reduce congestion.
In 2023, government and the private sector established the National Logistics Crisis Committee (NLCC) to facilitate urgent action to improve performance by the Transnet rail and port network.
“Areas of focus included performance of key freight logistics rail corridors; congestion at strategic border crossings and associated national highway corridors such as the N1 and N3; as well as interventions to combat cable theft and maintenance backlogs at Transnet.
“At a policy level, interventions in the logistics sector are guided by the National Rail Policy of 2022 and complemented by the National Freight Logistics Roadmap of 2023,” she said.
The National Rail Policy enables the introduction of open access and private-sector participation in the national rail network, fostering effective competition to enhance both the quantity and quality of rail services and reduce transport costs while the network remains state-owned.
The second key development is the release of the Request for Information (RFI) on the five key rail and port corridors.
“The RFI seeks to solicit information from participants in the rail and port freight logistics sector with the objective of using such information to develop Framing Problem Statements for relevant Requests for Proposals (RFPs), which we aim for Transnet to issue by August this year,” Creecy said.
“In June, we hope to issue an RFI for passenger rail that will include operational areas such as signalling, depots and rolling stock, as well as high-speed rail corridors. This information will be used by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa to issue RFPs in October this year,” the minister said. - SAnews.gov.za
