No reason for private sector concern over proposed Transport Regulator’

Industry fears about Transport Minister Sbu Ndebele proposing a grand fuehrer for the transport industry may be a bit of over-reaction, according to SA Port Regulator, Riad Kahn. This followed reports that the department was looking at setting up a permanent economic regulator to oversee tariffs and infrastructure development across all modes of transport. Currently the only regulated sectors are airports and ports. Rail, maritime and road companies are not regulated at all. A new, unified, permanent regulator, according to Ndebele, could go a long way to ensuring fair pricing and stability across all modes of public transport as well as ensuring that new infrastructure is not built in isolation from other modes of transport. The immediate fear that was expressed to FTW was that any government involvement in private sector industries was a bad thing. Even more so when the words “fair pricing across all modes” are expressed. If it was to be some form of government pricefixing in the road transport industry, it would be case of a return to the time of “regulated transport”, according to Dave Watts, maritime adviser to the SA Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff). “As far as freight is concerned,” he said, “the carriage of freight is – with the exception of rail and port – a highly competitive environment where price regulation would not make sense. And, if introduced, would be a step back to the ‘bad old days’ of road permits and protectionism.” Kevin Martin, MD of Freightliner Transport and chairman of the Durban Harbour Carriers’ Association (DHCA), suggested that any such control would be contrary to the basic role of a regulator in any industry. “Regulators are effectively there to prevent monopolistic practices,” he said, “not to control the private sector operators in the competitive freight industry.” And this, indeed, is the basic purpose of this proposed unified transport regulator, Khan told FTW. “It’s been under discussion at government level for four years,” he said. “They are relating this unified, permanent regulator to the access and pricing of the infrastructure – and ensuring that new infrastructure works for all the respective modes of transport using it.” He accepted the idea that, in road transport for example, the entity that would be regulated would not be the individual truckers, but the road network that they use. Transport Minister Ndebele said that the DoT was committed to a more stable regulatory environment. “In this regard,” he said, “we are looking at establishing a fulltime transport economic regulator to move away from our current ad-hoc approach. “This will allow for improved planning, co-ordination and efficiency.”