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Transport key to continental integration, says Minister

Deputy Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga talks about intercontinental integration

27th October 2017

By: Anine Kilian

Contributing Editor Online

     

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Intercontinental integration is not feasible without transport playing a critical and strategic role in ensuring that African countries are linked through roads, railway lines, shipping routes and air transport connections, says Deputy Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga.

Speaking at the Cross-Border Road Transport Agency Indaba, in Pretoria, this month, the Minister highlighted regional economic integration as an “essential mechanism” when it came to connecting Africans at an economic, social and cultural levels.

She noted that, while most regional integration initiatives aimed to connect Africa’s physical infrastructure, it was important to draw attention to often neglected aspects of continental integration, such as governing cross-border transport flows, managing cross-border road transport constraints and developing harmonised cross-border transport management regimes across the continent.

Chikunga highlighted the uniqueness of the African Union’s Linking Africa Plan, adding that it sought to answer questions beyond the physical barriers that were constraining continental integration.

Addressing trade and transport regulatory issues, the Linking Africa Plan is concerned with trade and transport regulatory issues and highlights the need for the private and public sectors to work together to address various issues affecting players across the entire value chain, including cross-border road transport operators, cargo owners, cross-border traders of goods and services, freight transport forwarders, and cross-border trade insurers, among other players.

“The Linking Africa Plan [appreciates] that transporting persons, goods and services from one country to another requires adherence and compliance with the rules, regulations, standards and requirements of the various countries [in] the continent’s different regions,” highlighted Chikunga.

With this in mind, she noted that several joint committee meetings held between South Africa and neighbouring countries revealed that operators within the Southern African Development Community felt that overly burdensome regulation could create barriers to cross-border investment and trade, as did the absence of a clear, transparent regulatory environment.

“Regulation of cross-border transport is a propeller of, and not an obstacle to, enhanced regional trade and the growth of cross-border trade and business. “This point is strongly supported by engagements we have held with South African transport operators and other industry players, and it is supported by other literature compiled from independent studies conducted by other development institutions.”

Chikunga added that inconsistent and flippant regulatory practices, such as regulatory authorities that are constantly changing rules and procedures without due process, and without the requisite consultation with their cross-border counterparts and industry players, were a challenge.

She noted that governments needed to consider regulation as key when it came to influencing private investors’ decisions on whether to invest in the markets that the continent sought to promote.

“Private-sector companies hold the view that regulatory visibility enables them to plan, predict, adjust and anticipate as they make investment decisions.

“The absence of regulatory certainty makes it difficult for private companies to invest in environments in which it is not possible to develop predictable business plans, or where it is almost impossible to anticipate what could happen next, because of the flippant manner in which regulatory frameworks are altered, without due regard to regulatory impact assessments,” she concluded.

Edited by Samantha Herbst
Creamer Media Deputy Editor

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