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TRAVELLING by road from Harare, the country’s capital, to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second biggest city, is now a pleasurable and thrilling experience as the 400km stretch is now of the level expected of a modern developmental state.
However, travelling to Victoria Falls, the Mecca of domestic and international tourism, from Bulawayo is both tortuous and treacherous.
The same, too, can be said of the “corridor of death” that has become the highway from Beitbridge to Harare, itself the continent’s busiest thoroughfare and gateway to South Africa, Africa’s second-biggest economy.
Zimbabwe’s centrality and strategic geographical location in Southern Africa has the potential to make it a transport and logistics hub.
But statistics indicate that it does not measure up to this challenge, especially in the road transport sector.
Of the estimated total road network of 800 000km, only 20 percent is surfaced; and of the surfaced portions, vast swatches are plagued by potholes or are unimaginably uneven.
This situation is not peculiar to Zimbabwe, and the country is even better than many in Africa.
The World Bank estimates that only 16 percent of Sub-Saharan roads were paved in 2011. This compares to 26 percent in Latin America and 65 percent in East Asia.
Also, the road network itself remains inconvenient, a development that comes with a huge cost to business and the economy.
For example, where it is supposed to take half the time and distance to travel to Victoria Falls from Harare using a direct road link between the two points, it takes a huge effort to complete the journey.
The 15-year-old sanctions activated by the United States of America and the European Union after Zimbabwe’s relationship with Britain soured after 1999 over land reforms have made efforts to rehabilitate the local road network daunting.
The country now has to rely on local resources to sponsor road projects.
Experts say the country, which has a huge infrastructure funding gap, needs more than US$5 billion to transform local roads into a trafficable state.
“Its actually difficult to quantify (the funding gap) especially in the absence of a roads condition survey … If funding was found was ought to be found, we would need to revamp or overhaul in totality the whole network in Zimbabwe. And if we talk about reconstruction or new construction, we are talking about millions of dollars. I think the board chair (Mr Albert Mugabe) is on record that if we are access a figure of say US $5 billion, we will be able to do justice in terms of road development and maintenance, and, currently, like in our case in a good year we are able to mobilise about US $200 million,” said Engineer Moses Juma, the acting chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara ), a statutory body that administers the local road fund.
“From the conference that we have been having here in Victoria Falls — the ARMFA conference — what has come very clear is that in terms of the regional comparative our fuel levy quantum is on the lower side. Some of our peers are collecting anything up to 15 percent of the fuel levy but in Zimbabwe our rates are very low. I think we are the lowest in terms of the cents per litre that goes to the Road Fund.
“So there have been discussions that maybe it would be prudent to peg it using a percent so that when fuel increases, it will just automatically adjusts as well,” he explained.
Most of the resources pooled into the Road Fund are generated from road user charges such as vehicle licence fees, toll fees, transit fees, fuel levy, abnormal load fees and presumptive tax.
The fuel levy, which last year grossed more than US$40 million, remains the lifeblood of the fund.
Vehicle licence fees contributed more than US$47 million, but about 30 percent of the money is chewed up by operational expenses and bank charges.
Toll fees and transit fees contributed US$27 million and US$18 million, respectively, of the US$133 million that the fund generated in 2015.
Government has decided to roll out 35 new tolling points, adding to the 26 toll gates that are already operational.
Not surprisingly, this has been met with scepticism by the public who feel that Zinara is not administering the Road Fund judiciously since there isn’t any demonstrable development.
Toll fees were increased by 100 percent last year.
As the country has been starved of support from international financiers, it has had to rely on the taxpayer to shore up reserves.
There is now a push for the Road Fund to find innovative ways of making money.
It is precisely because of this reason that road funds from across the continent decided to form the African Road Maintenance Funds Association (ARMFA) in 2003.
The 34-member body, meant to share knowledge and experiences in the mobilisation and judious application of road funds, met in Victoria Falls for its executive committee meeting last week. It was preceded by the ARMFA Southern Africa Focal Group Meeting.
Zimbabwe will host the AGM between February 22 and February 28, 2015 in Victoria Falls.
African countries are waking up to the need to fund infrastructure development.
The Lesotho Road Fund gets part of its contributions from fines generated from traffic offences, whilst in Namibia there is an option to float bonds to support road projects.
Zinara board chair Mr Mugabe said there were several options to augment money from road user charges.
He proposed leveraging on the country’s 88 000km road stretch by generating advertising through billboards.
Road administration experts believe Government has to revert to the old system where the fuel levy was pegged at 10 percent.
Presently, the State collects just USc4 per litre of petroleum imported by road.
It is argued that if the fuel levy is reviewed, collections could increase five-fold to US$200 million annually, lessing the burden on road users.
Online Reporter