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Uganda needs to focus on improving the effectiveness of its roads investment strategy for rural Uganda and improving the manner in it procures and implements roads contracts at the national level. In recent years the Government of Uganda has shifted the priorities in its national development strategy as there was accumulating evidence that infrastructure deficiencies had become a binding constraint to economic growth and poverty reduction. Consequently the Government of Uganda increased in particular the budget allocation for the road sector substantially as a means to tackle this constraint to growth and poverty reduction: i) by investing in rural roads it aims to facilitate market access for farmers, which will allow them to increase their earnings capacity; and ii) by improving the national roads network, transport cost will be reduced, competitiveness enhanced and additional income generated. However, to ensure the highest economic return for its investment, it is advised to rebalance the way allocations are set for rural roads and to increase absorptive capacity to efficiently utilize the augmented budgetary resources for the national roads sector.

Based on extensive data collection in Uganda, this paper demonstrates that the rural access index, as defined today, should not be a government objective because the benefit of such investment is minimal, whereas achieving rural accessibility at less than 2 kilometers would require massive investments that are not sustainable. Taking into account the fact that plot size is limited on average to less than 1 hectare, a farmer s transport requirement is usually minimal and does not necessarily involve massive investments in infrastructure. This is because most farmers cannot fully load a truck or pay for this service and, even if productivity were to increase significantly, the production threshold would not be reached by most individual farmers. Therefore, in terms of public policy, maintenance of the existing rural roads rather than opening new roads should be given priority; the district feeder road allocation maintenance formula should be revised to take into account economic potential and, finally, policy makers should devote their attention to innovative marketing models from other countries where smallholder loads are consolidated through private-based consolidators.

What are the main determinants of transport costs: network access or competition among transport providers? The focus in the transport sector has often been on improving the coverage of "hard" infrastructure, whereas in reality the cost of transporting goods is quite sensitive to the extent of competition among transport providers and scale economies in the freight transport industry, creating monopolistic behavior and circular causation between lower transport costs and greater trade and traffic. This paper contributes to the discussion on transport costs in Malawi, providing fresh empirical evidence based on a specially commissioned survey of transport providers and spatial analysis of the country s infrastructure network. The main finding is that both infrastructure quality and market structure of the trucking industry are important contributors to regional differences in transport costs. The quality of the trunk road network is not a major constraint but differences in the quality of feeder roads connecting villages to the main road network have significant bearing on transport costs. And costs due to poor feeder roads are exacerbated by low volumes of trade between rural locations and market centers. With empty backhauls and journeys covering small distances...

Argentina began to concession its intercity highways and the access roads to Buenos Aires in the early 1990s. It first offered the intercity highways for competitive bids, setting the terms, the tolls, and the service levels and basing bid selection primarily on the rental offered for the infrastructure. When it concessioned the access roads in a second round, it set the terms and the investments and selected the bid offering the lowest tolls. The results so far have been mixed. Investment has lagged, but maintenance of the intercity highways has improved. The authors review the lessons from this experience and identify some of the challenges for future concessions: following clear and simple rules in the bidding process, establishing clear rules for renegotiation, and strengthening regulatory capacity.

The objective of this note is to advise on an appropriate economic appraisal methodology that should be used for the assessment of Low Volume Rural Roads - that is roads upon which less than 200 motorized vehicles per day travel. Section 1 of this note sets out the reasons that Low Volume Rural Roads require a slightly different consideration from other transport projects. Section 2 discusses the approaches to economic evaluation that can be used for low volume rural roads, whilst Section 3 presents the manner that the consumer surplus method can be extended to account for the characteristics of low volume rural roads. Section 4 contains a summary of the main points of the note.

This report highlights deficiencies and indicates priorities for a prospective national transport strategy and action plan for further consideration by key stakeholders. The overall objective should be the development of a transport system, and an institutional framework, that facilitates rather than constrains, economic development in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A strong transport system contributes to economic growth by reducing the economic distance to markets by expanding opportunities for trade, by improving the competitiveness of national locations for production and distribution, and by facilitating mobility for a country s citizens; while minimizing the social and environmental costs of the transport sector. The report concludes by recommending actions that aim to improve the institutional framework, improve the sustainability of the transport sector, facilitate broad based economic growth, and mitigate the social and environmental detriments associated with transport. Specific policy recommendations are presented to accomplish these conclusions.

Isolation contributes to rural poverty. Without a minimum of reliable and efficient access to locations of basic social and economic activities, rural life stagnates and local development prospects remain limited. Providing and maintaining a minimum level of access, referred to in this paper as basic access, is therefore a necessary element of any rural development strategy. Overcoming isolation necessitates holistic strategies. Approaches include improved logistics to support trade and communication, the promotion of transport services and intermediaite means of transport, improved quality and location of services, and the sustaianable provision of cost-effective transport infrastrucutre. Among these, the cost-effective design and appraisal of rural transport infrastructure (RTI) is the topic of this paper. A basic access approach to the provision of RTI is presented which gives priority to the provision and maintenance of reliable, all-season access. Basic access interventions are defined as the least-cost investments which provide a minimum level of all-season passability. In a majority of cases...

In China, rural road improvements have been integrated with major highway projects, implemented with World Bank assistance, during 1995-98. These improvements were called, "Roads Improvement for Poverty Alleviation (RIPA)," and were linked to on-going poverty alleviation programs. These Bank assisted projects are in five provinces of China: Gansu, Henan, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Shaanxi. RIPA concentrates on linking those rural villages and townships which do not currently have basic all weather access to the existing road networks of a higher order. This report focuses, from a conceptual analytical, and methodological viewpoint upon the RIPA experience in the above-mentioned Bank-assisted projects in China. It also describes the background to poverty alleviation programs and the linkages to roads improvement in China. It reviews current practices and recommends appropriate design standards, and a framework of monitoring indicators. This report focuses on those road systems which provide easy access to the rural population in designated poor counties in China. The primary objectives are to provide a conceptual framework for RIPA...

Many investments in infrastructure are built on the belief that they will ineluctably lead to poverty reduction and income generation. This has entailed massive aid-financed projects in roads in developing countries. However, the lack of robust evaluations and a comprehensive theoretical framework could raise questions about current strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the second Cameroonian national household survey (Enquete Camerounaise Aupres des Menages II, 2001) and the Cameroon case study, this paper demonstrates that investing uniformly in tarred roads in Africa is likely to have a much lower impact on poverty than expected. Isolation from a tarred road is found to have no direct impact on consumption expenditures in Cameroon. The only impact is an indirect one in the access to labor activities. This paper reasserts the fact that access to roads is only one factor contributing to poverty reduction (and not necessarily the most important in many cases). Considering that increase in non-farming activities is the main driver for poverty reduction in rural Africa...

Road transport has long been the dominant form of transport for freight and passenger movement throughout the world. Because most road projects require investments with long amortization periods and because many projects do not generate enough demand to become self-financing through some type of user fee or toll, the road sector remains in the hands of the public sector to a much greater extent than other transport activities. But governments throughout the world, including those of many poor African and South Asian countries, are commercializing their operations to cut costs, improve user orientation, and increase sector-specific revenue. There seems to be demand for toll roads in specific settings, but the problems met by many of this "first generation" of road concessions-from Mexico to Thailand-have given toll projects a bad reputation. Many mistakes were made, and tolling is obviously not the best solution for every road. Most of the alternatives aim at improving efficiency (lowering costs). But there are many ways of getting the private sector involved in toll roads, thus reducing public sector financing requirements for the sector. Understanding the context in which toll roads are viable is essential both for their initial success and for effective long-run regulation. The authors provide a broad overview of issues at stake from the viewpoint of both privatization teams and regulators responsible for supervising contractual commitments of private operators and the government...

The biggest problem of Marudi Town, the major town of the districts in Sarawak, Malaysia, is the lack of an access road to connect it to the outside world, especially to the nearest city, Miri City. The Sarawak state government argued that the main reason for not providing an access road between Marudi and Miri was to reduce rural-urban migration. Since July 2005, a logging access road built by a logging company has made the Marudi Town community accessible to Miri City by land transportation. This thesis examines the social and economic impacts of the logging access road on the Marudi Town community since July 2005. A case study approach has been applied and two models of access road have been examined. The first model argues that rural access roads stimulate outward migration, while the second model suggests that access roads facilitate rural economic development. Data has been collected through questionnaire surveys, face-to-face in depth interviews, field observation and secondary data analysis. The results show that outward migration occurred before the existence of the logging access road, and the justification given by the state government for not providing an access road between Marudi Town and Miri City is questioned by the local people. Various positive impacts have been created since July 2005; namely an increase in weekend residents and visitors...

Infrastructure projects, and more specifically, roads construction, and maintenance are one of the core operations of the World Bank. However, despite the increase of gender mainstreaming efforts in transport projects little is known about the effects of these interventions on women’s agency defined as the ability to make effective choices and transform these choices into desired outcomes’. This study aims to bridge this knowledge gap. The study looks at the effects of women’s participation in roads construction and maintenance and rural economy promotion activities on women’s agency, which has recently become a focus of study at the World Bank. Through individual interviews and focus groups the study assesses the effects of women-targeted interventions in three rural transport projects in Argentina, Nicaragua, and Peru. By focusing on agency, the study sheds light on effects of gender mainstreaming interventions that have more lasting effects on gender equality given the catalytic value of agency on other gender outcomes such as economic opportunities and endowments. The report is structured as follows: section one gives introduction. Second section describes the gender dimensions and agency-enhancing approaches in transport projects and the gender approaches in project implementation in the selected case studies. The third section provides a summary of the methodology of the study. The fourth section describes the key findings of the qualitative research. The fifth section presents the lessons learned to inform future rural transport interventions. The sixth section provides concluding remarks.

The road sector is the dominant mode of transport in Argentina carrying nearly 80 percent of total freight volume. The road network has a total length of about 630,000 km (11 percent paved), divided in three administrative levels: national, provincial, and municipal. However, more than 70 percent of total traffic volumes are concentrated on the paved national and provincial network, with the municipal network consisting of unpaved roads, access roads to farms and feeder roads with very low traffic volumes. A survey carried out in 1992 confirmed that only 44 percent of the national paved network was in good condition, with a high 35 percent of roads in poor condition. Rehabilitation works for the non-concessioned portion were contracted to the private sector under the traditional ad-measurement type or unit price-based system while maintenance activities continued to be carried out by force-account. In 1993 a loan from the World Bank was approved to finance, for the first time, high priority rehabilitation and maintenance works on the non-concessioned paved network...

Landlocked Bhutan faces unique challenges, and opportunities as it pursues the development of its transport sector into the 21st century. Bhutan's population growth rate is high, rural-urban migration is accelerating, and, fueled by sustained economic growth, the country is urbanizing rapidly, giving rise to an expanding urban middle class, with rising expectations of well-paid employment, accessible services, and consumption potential. However, accessibility to a large measure depends on availability of reliable, and affordable transportation. Poor rural access is synonymous with rural isolation, and poverty, while high external and domestic transport costs constrain the country's economic and social development. Transportation poses a considerable cost disadvantage to business and commercial undertakings; road transport is slow and regularly disrupted by landslides and flooding; air transport is costly and erratic. Costly transport is a major factor constraining the development of tourism, horticultural exports...

In the 1990s, Zimbabwe's economic growth began to slow following a balance of payments crisis and repeated droughts. By the late 1990s Zimbabwe's economy was in serious trouble driven by economic mismanagement, political violence, and the wider impact of the land reform program on food production. During 2007 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contract by more than 6 percent, making the cumulative output decline over 35 percent since 1999. The unrelenting economic deterioration is doing long-term damage to the foundations of the Zimbabwean economy, private sector investment is virtually zero, infrastructure has deteriorated, and skilled professionals have left the country. With inflation accelerating, the Government introduced, in 2007, blanket price controls and ordered businesses to cut prices by half. Despite the strict price controls inflation continues to rise as the root cause of high inflation, monetization of the large public sector financing needs remains unaddressed. A large part of the high public sector deficit is due to quasi-fiscal spending by the central bank on mainly concessional credits and subsidized foreign exchange for priority sectors...

The Republic of Yemen has experienced steady development in the recent past and its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is approaching US$1,000. By many aspects, Yemen is unique. It is still a rural country (with more than 70 percent of the population living in the countryside). It has about 140,000 villages and small settlements spread out all over the territory, many of which still need road access and harbor most of the country's poor (40 percent of the total population). Given the uneven distribution of population, transport demand varies enormously between different parts of the country. It is highest by far in the densely populated mountainous northwest part of the country and generally very small in the vast low density eastern part. Transport is essential to ensure that the rural areas participate in the main stream of economic and social life. Transport is also essential for trade, which is a key to the future of the economy. This is reinforced by the fact that most of the population is located away from the coastal areas...

The aim of the scoping study was to gain an understanding of the productive activities slum dwellers engage in that rely on energy services and the potentials and challenges of slums in Ghana regarding access to modern energy services and income generation from productive activities. The objective of the ESMED-EAfUP (Energy Sector Management Assistance Program - ESMAP/SME Development - Energy Access for the Urban Poor) programme is 'to create and sustain a network of energy practitioners to support development of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) as users and providers of modern energy services for slum upgrading programs.'. Using ability to adopt safer and modern energy forms as a criterion in assessing the effective deployment of safer and modern energy forms, the study concluded that the high propensity to save is an opportunity for their deployment if they can be sensitized about the benefits of using modern energy forms, which many of the slum dwellers are not aware of. Most enterprise owners could also capitalize on the credit policies of the financial institutions they saved with to adopt the modern energy forms. Lack of education and limited awareness about the benefits of using clean...

This note presents a number of policy options to improve basic access and promote the mobility of Pakistan's rural population in support of the Government's Poverty Reduction Strategy. This is achieved through more focused and community driven interventions to meet the direct needs of the rural population. The current state of rural accessibility and mobility are examined together with their effect on both the social and economic dimensions of rural poverty. Key challenges and constraints to reform are identified. The note contributes to the current debate within Pakistan with regard to the better targeting of interventions to assist the rural poor. It should also be of interest to policy makers in other countries concerned with how rural transport policy may be developed to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

In this paper the authors compare indicators of development, infrastructure, and living conditions in the slums of Dakar, Nairobi, and Johannesburg using data from 2004 World Bank surveys. Contrary to the notion that most African cities face similar slum problems, find that slums in the three cities differ dramatically from each other on nearly every indicator examined. Particularly striking is the weak correlation of measures of income and human capital with infrastructure access and quality of living conditions. For example, residents of Dakar's slums have low levels of education and high levels of poverty but fairly decent living conditions. By contrast, most of Nairobi's slum residents have jobs and comparatively high levels of education, but living conditions are but extremely bad . And in Johannesburg, education and unemployment levels are high, but living conditions are not as bad as in Nairobi. These findings suggest that reduction in income poverty and improvements in human development do not automatically translate into improved infrastructure access or living conditions. Since not all slum residents are poor...

Road transport is the dominant mode of transport in sub-Saharan Africa, carrying close to 90 percent of the region's passenger and freight transport, and providing the only access to rural communities where over 70 percent of Africans live. Despite their importance, most of the region's nearly 2 million km of roads are poorly managed and badly maintained. By 1990, nearly a third of the $150 billion invested in roads had been eroded through lack of maintenance. To restore only those roads that are economically justified and prevent further deteriorations will require annual expenditures of at least $1.5 billion over the next ten years, or more than double the requirements of regular maintenance. To find sustainable solutions to these problems, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the World Bank launched the Road Maintenance Initiative (RMI) as part of the sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program (SSATP). With support from a number of bilateral donors, the Initiative has spent the last six years working with African countries to identify the causes of poor road maintenance policies and to develop an agency for reforming them. The key concept to emerge from the debate on how to strengthen financing and management of roads is commercialiation: bring roads into the marketplace and put them on a fee for service basis. However...