COMESA urges all members to establish road funds and development agencies
COMESA, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, says that 15 of its 21 member states have established dedicated Road Funds and Road Development Agencies.
Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Swaziland, Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Rwanda, and Sudan have all set up dedicated bodies to undertake maintenance and development of national and regional road networks.
In a statement, COMESA said: “For most of these countries, funding for road maintenance has been derived from fuel levy while funding for new construction and rehabilitation has been through borrowing from development banks and support from cooperating partners.
“The meeting observed that roads command a bigger market share for surface transport hence COMESA countries have undertaken road sector management reforms to address financing of routine maintenance, rehabilitation and construction of new roads by establishing road funds administration,” said the regional body.
The meeting attendees included Permanent Secretaries, directors and other technical staff from member states governments and specialised agencies.
The COMESA secretariat has, additionally, conducted awareness workshops on the Tripartite Transport and Transit Facilitation (TTTF) Programme in six member states. This is part of a 710 000 Euros project provided by the European Union to support such awareness activities.
The programme is designed to assist member states domesticate and implement the agreed harmonised regional road transport regulations, standards and systems in a coordinated and synchronised manner.
The overall strategic objective is to facilitate the development of a more competitive, integrated and liberalised regional road transport market in the Eastern and Southern African region.
As a result of the workshops, countries have started submitting requests for technical support to start implementing the TTTF programme.
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