Related Articles
Top Stories
May 25 2012 13:58
The costs of the first phase of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project have increased significantly to almost R90bn, according to a report.
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 25 2012 11:36
The JSE has identified and stopped "incorrect" trades from one of its members, and will reverse the trades and lower the session's total value after the close.
Johannesburg - The high costs of freight transport and associated risk in South Africa are not sustainable.
Experts say that the challenges for transporting goods in the interior are assuming critical proportions.
According to a report on the domestic logistics industry published by the CSIR and Imperial Logistics each year, overhead expenses of supplies in South Africa have doubled in the past four years while transport costs have risen more than 50%.
Hans Ittman, executive director for built environment at the CSIR, says solutions are urgently required, one of which is to remove much of the freight from the roads and put it back on trains.
"Only about 13% of goods in South Africa is transported by rail, while the remainder (87%) of the country's logistic needs is being met by trucks."
The latest report points out that the high traffic volumes on roads is causing great damage to the public road network.
"The worse the roads become, the greater the cost implications for transport contractors. Bad roads can increase costs by up to 684%," says the study.
Elvin Harris, the freight transport manager at Transnet Freight Rail, says the ideal would be to transport about 35% of all goods in South Africa by rail.
But Harris does not believe that this target is attainable within the next five years.
"In the next five years Transnet would have to spend about R40bn on its rail operations.
"Some R16bn of this would be for upgrading the infrastructure of its trains. This investment would, however, not be enough to increase rail freight to even 30% in the next five years.
"Half would simply go to replacing existing infrastructure."
According to Ittman, poor management at Transnet over the past 20 years, including inadequate expenditure on infrastructure over this period, has contributed to South Africa's freight transport industry predicament. "But Transnet's current management team has an outstanding strategy and gives one hope for the future."
- Sake24.com
For more business news in Afrikaans, go to Sake24.com.