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May 24 2012 17:31
The Reserve Bank will maintain current interest rates, and a considerable reduction in the local petrol price is anticipated, says governor Gill Marcus.
May 24 2012 15:29
The Reserve Bank will maintain current interest rates, says governor Gill Marcus.
May 24 2012 12:00
Britain fell deeper into recession than initially thought in the first quarter of 2012, upping chances that the central bank could inject more stimulus into the economy.
Cape Town - Investment levels in South Africa's road network were about half of what was required and at the same
time there had been a shift of freight traffic from the 1980s from rail to road - contributing heavily to the gradual degradation of the road system - says the national transport department.
This emerges from a freight strategy document released by Transport Minister Jeff Radebe this week.
The busiest freight corridor - between Durban and Gauteng - carried 29 million tons of cargo a year.
While the primary road infrastructure in this corridor was reported in the document to be "of very good quality", when
combined with the secondary provincial road network, the corridor had an index of 38% of roads in a poor condition compared to an international benchmark of 5% to 10%.
The report says that the deregulation of freight transport in the 1980s coupled with rail system inefficiencies caused a migration of cargo from rail "which has resulted in high growth in cargo movement by road.
"The significant increase in heavy vehicle traffic volumes on road networks is shortening the maintenance and rehabilitation cycles of the road network which in turn increases the burden on the fiscus."
The State spends just short of one billion a year on national roads, the document said.
"Initiatives that have been implemented to curb the practice of
overloading on our roads and the introduction of the user pays principle through toll roads have resulted in an unintended consequence of heavy vehicle transporters using the secondary (rural) road network instead.
"This road network is not designed for heavy loads and high heavy
vehicle traffic ... and is thus rapidly deteriorating, resulting in efficiency and road safety problems," says the report.
Noting that the road freight operations moved some 650 million tons of freight a year -better vehicle fuel efficiency and increased fleet utilisation had led to more competitive pricing for road freight.
But one of the negative consequences of the competitive environment was the long working hours of drivers. The fatal accident rate had increased from eight to 10 fatalities per 100 million vehicle kilometres traveled from 1991 to 2000 to 13 to 14 fatalities for the period from 2001 to 2003.
One of the ways of resolving the problem of overuse of the roads system was to make the rail service more efficient and competitive with road freight transport.
This included plans to draw the private sector into investing in
both the primary network - the network between the cities and which connects them to entry points to the country - and an envisaged secondary rail network.
The minister of transport would determine "the rate of introduction of competition" says the strategy document.
The primary and secondary networks, however, would be owned by the rail utility, Spoornet, the document noted.