traffic be Tanzania's rail Upgrading a key corridor directly benefits Tanzania’s transport sector, writes Gordon Feller

easy task. It means facilitating trade, economic productivity and efficiency and global competitiveness for Tanzania and neighbouring countries.

The poor state of rail infrastructure and equipment contribute to the operational weaknesses in all components of the logistics chain. It all starts at the port: long customs clearance processes; long operating delays; insufficient intermodal facilities. TIRP’s main objective had been to deliver a reliable open access infrastructure on the Dar es Salaam-to-lsaka (970 km) rail segment. TIRP’s focus on upgrading a key corridor directly benefits Tanzania’s larger transport sector by helping to increase port capacity in Dar-es-Salaam. It also sets up new logistics services and standards along this railways line - even up to the cities of Mwanza and Kigoma.

Tanzania’s location and size are both notable. With a land mass of about 947,000 sq km, and with rich mineral and agricultural resources, it plays a critical role as a transport hub for landlocked neighbours, provides opportunities for investors, foreign and domestic. Tanzania has an extensive transport system with a road network of about 93,000 km and a railways system run- ning across 3681 km. Of that total, approximately 2706 km are operated by Tanzania Railways Limited (TRL). And, nearly 975 km is operated by Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA).

A National Transport Policy (NTP) was formally approved by the government in 2003. It’s been updated to reflect the changes that are necessary to improve performance of the sector. NTP’s over-arching goal has been facilitate the achievement of the National Development Vision 2025, the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and the “National Strategy for Growth and Poverty Reduction (aka MKUKUTA)".

One of NTP’s major achievements has been the fundamental reform of transport sector management. The reform includes delegating regulatory and executive functions to autonomous authorities; creating an independent user-financed funding mechanism for road maintenance; concessioning transport operations to private firms; limiting the role of the Ministry of Transport to policy setting and sector oversight.

In order to implement the NTP, the government developed a 10-year Transport Sector Investment Programme (TSIP) which described the transport environment as one where “the movement of freight along major corridors han- dling international traffic of land-locked neighbouring countries to/from Tanzania, or national traffic to/from remote areas from the coast, is characterized by long transit time, extensive delays and high transport costs.” In parallel, the government’s “Short-Term Sector Investment Programme (STSIP) was developed to help align the TSIP with the government’s annual Medium-Term Expenditure Frameworks.

Although road network quality, and associated services, improved significantly during the last decade, transport costs are still high. For some neighboring landlocked countries, it can be as high as 50% of the value of exports. During the past 20 years, the railway transport has lost major market share on long haul inter-regional and intra-regional transport corridors to the road transport.

This is due to deteriorating railway infrastructure and inefficient operating standards. Tanzania’s railways concession did little to upgrade rail infrastructure and to improve the competitiveness of the railway transport vis-à-vis road transport on inter-regional and intra-regional transport corridors.

Tanzania’s rail transport shortcomings are well known. But the lack of a commonly agreed strategy has led to an uncoordinated response by key stakeholders. It will take years to successfully tackle the declining market share for railway’s mode of transport, poor railway infrastructure and major capacity issues. Many have been seeking to tackle the rapidly declining market share for the railway mode of transport, poor railway infrastructure and major capacity issues. Consequently, TIRP’s new railway centric intermodal transport strategy was based on a clear business model for both freight and passenger services. One key principle was that inter-regional and intra-regional transport corridors are needed. (Although passenger service is important, TIRP was focused on freight traffic).

TIRP targeted logistics processes: processing times at the port; the regularity (of train operations); the reliability (of the transit time); loading and unloading times; facilities at the rail heads; intermodal facilities.

Numerous studies have concluded that the use of intermodal transport would reduce the high transport costs in Tanzania and in the sub region. However, intermodal transport has not really developed on key surface transport corridors. This was due to the poor performance of railways and port services, and this resulted in the transport chain being unreliable and unpredictable. The situation led to increased producer prices and a lengthening of the supply chain. As constraining national activity and reduced the competitiveness of Tanzania’s trading sectors, poor infrastructure created delays for good transport to and from its six landlocked neighbours (Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Zambia and Malawi).

The impact of increased transport costs is well illustrated by the fact that they account for 40% of the value of Burundi’s exports. This impedes investment and growth in the greater regional economy. Competing transport corridors from Mombasa or Durban have reached out to some of Tanzania’s neighbors – and they will continue to attract traffic which could otherwise be transiting through Tanzania. Due to the lack of good intermodal integration, and poor performance of the railways, Tanzania has lost the opportunity to become the major regional transport hub for its growing neighbors (which have an estimated combined population of about 90 million).

Tanzania defined a business model that worked to optimise the scope of the infrastructure rehabilitation accordingly. TIRP aims to create the conditions for competitive rail services which improve the performance TRL, the train operator. Carrying out transport services on this infrastructure can increase market share. It can also result in improved financial self-sustainability.

The World Bank’s project leaders designed the project around four components:

Component 1: Railway Track Rehabilitation –about $123 million

The focus is on rehabilitation of key sections of railway track infrastructure, plus other infrastructure improvements which help to guarantee more reliable service between Dar-es-Salam and Isaka. It involves the procurement of rails, sleepers, and related engineering works (alignments, laying of track, rebuilding of bridges and culverts).

Component 2: Rolling Stock Rehabilitation –about $20 million:

The rehabilitation of locomotives and selected rolling stock to deliver service at the level identified above in key results. Most of this equipment has been dedicated to new intermodal services, although the improvement in TRL’s traction capacity is has had a positive impact on existing services.

Component 3: Terminals Improvements – $2 million

The re-design and upgrade of rail exchanges at the port, and particularly in and around the two container depots in the port, plus the Isaka terminal. This enables more efficient modal transfers to rail.

Component 4: Capacity Building $5 million was provided for training programme.