Single SADC rail company should drive region's infrastructure needs - Negota

Anna Cox CERTAIN RAIL lines in the SADC region should be owned by a single company in which all member states should hold shares, the size of which can be determined on the basis of the value of the assets each participating country has contributed into the company. That's the radical suggestion from George Negota, chairman of the Cross Border Road Transport Agency, who believes that this will attract suitable investors and go a long way to improving the transport infrastructure in the region. "The economies of scale can enable even countries without the numbers and volumes to survive and therefore modern technology can be profitably injected as a regional initiative," he said. "While this proposal sounds radical, it has the potential of preventing the destructive competition between some SADC member states in the name of competition," he said. The proposal could be introduced gradually or could even be restricted to long distance cross-border rail freight transport before it is introduced into long distance rail passenger transport. "Both domestic freight and passenger rail transport can be left outside the plan at the initial stage or never be made part of the proposed company depending on the support this proposal may gain from member states," he added. Negota said that the importance of investments in transport infrastructure had been recognised in the SADC region and the entire continent for many years. The problem with rail and road transport infrastructure has been the lack of proper maintenance which seems to have been the case in most of the SADC member states. "For the transport infrastructure to be enabling to economic development, adequate quantity and reliability are also key factors, and for that reason countries are also enabled to compete in international trade. In part, because of infrastructure problems, shipping costs of certain goods from landlocked countries in the region such as Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia cannot always be the same as those from South Africa and Mozambique," he said. "Investment in transport infrastructure can only promote regional economic development if there is a common regional transport development approach," he said.