Name: A Diagnostic Study into Road Financing Paradoxes which have led to Inefficient Road Asset Management in Zambia
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Author: Yohane Tembo
ISBN: 978-3-656-85673-3

Investments in transport infrastructure have massive economic benefits, leading to a vibrant and efficient transport system. In Zambia, where a disproportionate distribution of freight between road and rail exists, with road transport carrying over 85% of freight, the significance of road investments cannot be emphasized. To remain competitive, the country must prioritize sustainable road maintenance on her road network, and ensure that a decent balance is maintained between investments in maintenance and those aimed at new construction.

Insufficient budgetary allocation to road maintenance normally results in road deterioration that significantly reduces the utility of the existing roads. This makes it expensive and more difficult to move products and services from producers to consumers or inputs to designated industrial centers. Construction of new roads is deterred due to lack of funds, which entails that many areas which have the potential to trigger economic growth would remain unnecessarily inaccessible for far too long. The alternative is to seek political interference in the budgeting process in order to skew the fiscus towards road construction and development, rather than routine and periodic road maintenance which, purposefully, extend the service life cycle of existing road infrastructure through effective and efficient road asset management. Naturally, maintenance is rarely seen as important and it hardly attracts appropriate funding from the fiscus.

For many years, it has been observed that Zambia’s road asset has been wasting away at an accelerated rate due to the preference of reactive, rather than preventive, road maintenance strategies. New road construction is believed to have also contributed to the neglect of maintenance. This study, therefore, aims to analyze Zambia’s incongruent road financing strategies which have led to inefficient road asset management. Endogenous deficiencies which tend to exhibit themselves in a road network that is grossly in a state of disrepair are exposed and discussed in the context of optimized and sustainable road network and budgetary allocations as a cure going forward. However, the final decision about which policies and strategies should be adopted to address the vexing problem, has been left entirely in the hands of political office holders, in whom the people of Zambia have had to vest their power to legislate and manage the affairs of the country.

Leseprobe

DECLARATION

ABSTRACT

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF TEXT BOXES

LIST OF FIGURES

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Problem statement
1.3 Aims and objectives
1.4 Scope of the study
1.5 Significance of the study

2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Analysis of the Project Title
2.3 The Economic Question of Road Investments
2.4 Legal and Institutional Framework
2.5 Maintenance Philosophies
2.6 Resource Mobilization

3 METHODOLOGY
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Theoretical Background
3.3 Presentation of the Methodology
3.3.1 Choice of Variables
3.3.2 Hypothesis
3.3.3 Data Collection
3.3.4 Analysis
3.3.5 Validation

4 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Process
4.3 Results from Analysis of Secondary Data
4.4 Results from Analysis of Primary Data
4.5 Analysis

5 CONCLUSION
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Main Conclusions
5.3 Summary

6 RECOMMENDATIONS
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Recommendations

7 BIBLIOGRAPHY

8 APPENDICES

Appendix A: Data and Analysis for Secondary Data

Appendix B: Data and Analysis for Primary Data

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Project Title Definition

Table 2: Global Outlook Human and Vehicular Demographics (2010-2012)

Table 3: Road Sector Financing Matrix

Table 4:Examples of Research Methodologies

Table 5: Sample of Likert Scale

Table 6: Year-end Foreign Exchange Mid-Rates in Analysis

Table 7: Zambia’s Road Network

Table 8: Trends in Road Fund and Maintenance Gap in Zambia

Table 9: Optimized Budget Run Using HDM IV: TMD Alternative Funding Requirement (2012-2016)

Table 10: Optimized TMD Kilometres of Roads Maintained (2012 – 2016)

Table 11: PFR/Urban Funding Requirements (2012 – 2016)

Table 12: Combined Outputs (Km) for CRN (2012 – 2016)

Table 13: Updated PFR/Urban Funding Requirements (2012 – 2016)

Table 14: Upgrading to Bituminous Standard: Analysis of Projected Needs versus Budget

Table 15: Planned versus Projected: Financial Needs and SNDP/MTEF Budget

Table 16: Computations for Maintenance and Total Road Expenditures

Table 17: Budget Expenditure as per AWPs (2012 – 2014)

Table 18: Zambia’s Road Expenditure vs. Gross National Product

Table 19: Annual Work Plan Proportional Expenditure (2006 – 2014)

Table 20: Self-administered Adapted Asset Management Policy Framework

Table 21: Likert Scales used in the Analysis

Table 22: Summary of Survey Results

Table 23: Estimate of 2012 Upgrading Kilometers

Table 24: Annual Budget Analysis (2006 – 2014)

Table 25: Status of Resource Mobilization

Table 26: Comparative Analysis of Unit Rates

Table 27: Trends in Diesel Pump Prices

Table 28: Trends in Zambia’s Inflation Rate

Table 29: Foreign Exchange Rates

Table 30: Rates Analysis on some Selected Link Zambia 8000 Projects

Table 31: Rates Analysis on Routine Maintenance Contracts under Lusaka City Council (2013)

Table 32: Comparative TMDs and Urban Unit Rates for Seals and Asphalt on Running Contracts

Table 33: Unit Rates Development for Urban Roads on Running Contracts

Table 34: Unit Rates Development for TMDs on Running Contracts

Table 35: Rates Analysis on Periodic Maintenance Unpaved Roads (2013)

Table 36: Rates Analysis on Rehabilitation Unpaved Roads (2013)

Table 37: Rates Analysis of Upgrading Projects (2012 – 2013)

Table 38: Worksheet: Current Unit Costs for Asphalt and Surfacing Seals on TMD Roads

Table 39: Worksheet: Current Unit Costs for Asphalt and Surfacing Seals on Urban Roads

Table 40: Worksheet: Current Unit Costs for Asphalt and Surfacing Seals on TMD Link Zambia 8000 Roads

Table 41: Raw Data: Category 1 and 2 Questions

Table 42: Raw Data: Category 3 and 4 Questions

Table 43: Analysis of Category 1 Questions

Table 44: Analysis of Category 2 Questions

Table 45: Analysis of Category 3 Questions

Table 46: Analysis of Category 4 Questions

Table 47: Weighted Mean for Category 1 and 2 Questions

Table 48: Weighted Mean for Category 3 and 4 Questions

LIST OF TEXT BOXES

Text Box 1: Case Study on Asset Management Challenge in North Dakota

Text Box 2: Adapted Asset Management Policy Framework

Text Box 3: Case Study on Challenges of Delayed Payments in Ghana

Text Box 4: Cover Note Accompanying Questionnaire

Text Box 5: Sample of Questionnaire used to collect Primary Data

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Pavement Performance Curve over Time

Figure 2: Balancing Maintenance and Capital Investments

Figure 3: The Conceptual Constructs Model

Figure 4: The Influence of Philosophical Assumptions on Research Process & Tasks

Figure 5: A Holistic (Cyclical) Approach to Research Tasks, driven by the CCM

Figure 6: Zambia’s Road Network Condition, 2012

Figure 7: Annual Work Plan Budget Trends (2006 – 2014)

Figure 8: Condition of Trunk Road T5 Chingola to Solwezi.

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

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DECLARATION

I declare that this project entitled “A Diagnostic Study into Road Financing Paradoxes which have led to Inefficient Road Asset Management in Zambia ” is the work of my own research except as cited in the references. The project report has not been accepted for any degree and is not concurrently submitted in candidature of other degree.

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Signature :

Name : Yohane Tembo

Date : February, 2014

Please note that, except otherwise referenced, the views expressed in this dissertation are the author’s views who takes full responsibility including any misrepresentations which may be noted.

ABSTRACT

Insufficient budgetary allocation to road maintenance normally results in road deterioration that significantly reduces the utility of the existing roads. This makes it expensive and more difficult to move products and services from producers to consumers or inputs to designated industrial centers. Construction of new roads is deterred due to lack of funds, which entails that many areas which have the potential to trigger economic growth would remain unnecessarily inaccessible for far too long. The alternative is to seek political interference in the budgeting process in order to skew the fiscus towards road construction and development, rather than routine and periodic road maintenance which, purposefully, extend the service life cycle of existing road infrastructure through effective and efficient road asset management. Naturally, maintenance is rarely seen as important and it hardly attracts appropriate funding from the fiscus.

For many years, it has been observed that Zambia’s road asset has been wasting away at an accelerated rate due to the preference of reactive, rather than preventive, road maintenance strategies. New road construction is believed to have also contributed to the neglect of maintenance. This study, therefore, aims to analyze Zambia’s incongruent road financing strategies which have led to inefficient road asset management. Endogenous deficiencies which tend to exhibit themselves in a road network that is grossly in a state of disrepair are exposed and discussed in the context of optimized and sustainable road network and budgetary allocations as a cure going forward. However, the final decision about which policies and strategies should be adopted to address the vexing problem, has been left entirely in the hands of political office holders, in whom the people of Zambia have had to vest their power to legislate and manage the affairs of the country.

It is a key element of this doctoral dissertation to demonstrate evidence of originality in thinking and assist my country in road sector problem diagnostics, whilst at the same time attempting to make general additions to the overall body of knowledge that exists about road asset management systems in Zambia.

DEDICATION

This dissertation is particularly dedicated to all colleagues who have spent a substantial amount of their effort towards the improvement of the road transport system in Zambia, in pursuit of the nation’s sustainable economic growth and the general well-being of our citizens.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to thank and express my appreciation for the support that I received throughout my studies from my Tutors and Advisors at Atlantic International University. They were critical, but awesome too.

Secondly, I wish to express my gratitude to all the institutions, agencies, and ministries which assisted in a special way by giving me access to their information. These institutions primarily include the National Road Fund Agency, the Road Development Agency, and the Road Transport and Safety Agency. I also received assistance from the Ministry of Local Government and Housing, Ministry of Transport, Communication, Works, and Supply and the Ministry of Finance, for which I am very grateful.

My workmates were phenomenal throughout my study, without whom I could have failed to make it to this end. Friends and colleagues, too numerous to mention, rendered their support of a diverse nature in ensuring the success of my studies. Their criticism and contributions were of great help in refining my treatise.

Specific mention must be made of Engineer Grace Mutembo and Engineer Kapembwa Sikazwe, who took some time out of their busy schedules and regularly called on me to encourage me in my work. They also assisted with editing.

Further, I recognize and commend the people who participated in the survey by completing the questionnaire. Admittedly, the response was phenomenal and helpful. Their great enthusiasm was evident in their contributions, and in turn, they took my work as their own. I will remain forever indebted to them.

But most importantly, my dear wife Joyce, and my two daughters, Jessica and Audrey, for their enduring love and care during the period I had to spend lengthy hours at my study desk. “Good night, see you tomorrow”, Joyce would sometimes say as she went to bed; but these words also serve as a test of how prepared the research minds could be to face isolation in excellence, without having to break up family. Thanks again to Joyce for the immeasurable support.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A diagnostic study into road financing strategies which could have led to inefficient road asset management in Zambia was undertaken. A systematic approach was undertaken which included literature review, methodological presentation, and surveys, as well as presentation of results and analysis. Conclusions and recommendations were also made.

Resource mobilization for road construction and maintenance, and subsequent allocation to respective road programs can often be problematic for an emerging country like Zambia. It has the potential to lead to inefficiencies in road asset management as has evidently been demonstrated in the declining road asset value over time. The political, as well as the economic, landscape plays a vital role in resource mobilization and allocation strategies as much as the institutional and the legal framework do.

The failure to clear the backlog of maintenance which normally results, largely, from deferment of scheduled maintenance due to insufficient annual budgetary allocation to the road sector maintenance programs has led to the significant deterioration in road network condition, in spite of the relatively low volume of traffic on Zambian roads. The huge government emphasis that road transport infrastructure is the engine of Zambia’s economic development and growth, often fails to convince the citizens in reality. Exorbitant road construction costs have posed additional challenges to the fiscus, thereby constraining both the quantity and quality of road infrastructure that could be constructed and maintained at any given time. Recent policy drives have been categorical in their preference of new road construction aimed at linking Zambia, over road maintenance, which plays a pivotal role in road asset management.

The scenario described above creates a perception that policy pronouncements are at variance to policy documents which promote sustainable economic development through efficient road investments, thereby raising fears of typical market failure in the nation’s road sector. This could be seen as being paradoxical in that the actual financing strategies are skewed towards road construction, a recipe of comfort for the next election challenge due to increased visibility on the ground, rather than to maintenance, as an astute and effective way of managing the road asset.

The difficult of establishing congruence between government pronouncements and actual road business strategies in the implementing agencies has, over the years, posed challenges to the fiscal policy implementation. Consequently, this has often led to serious budget overruns due, firstly, to unplanned expenditure and, secondly, variations due to scope increase resulting from project implementation without having prior designs. Persistent budget deficits leading to ever constrained annual budgets have, in most cases, entirely closed the window for undertaking scheduled preventive and restorative road maintenance works. This has led to high operating inefficiencies of existing roads due to the high level of pavement degradation, with the eventual effect of higher vehicle operating costs, longer travel-times, driver and passenger discomfort, and ultimately, higher agency pavement replacement costs. The damage caused to the economy is apparent in all this.

This study had aimed to carry out an analysis of road financing strategies in Zambia, taking a special look into the past decade, with the view to ascertaining the extent to which roads budgets have been employed to fund new construction and maintenance. The aim was to establish that there is a mismatch in allocation of resources for roads in terms of needs and policy, in which new road construction is highly favored in preference to maintenance. It was hoped that if the mismatch existed, it would espouse some paradoxes which existed between the road asset management policies and actual strategies.

The research draws attention to the fact that over 76% of unpaved Primary Feeder Roads and 70% of unpaved Urban roads Zambia’s road network, which constitutes over 80% of the Core Road Network is in poor condition, while only 68% of the paved Trunk, Main, and District road network could be said to be in good condition. Further investigations revealed that the country has been spending an average of 0.71% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on road maintenance programs from 2006 to 2012, with a corresponding expenditure averaging 2.49% of the GDP on its total roads programs.

These indices have placed the country above the comfort zone of 0.5-1% of GDP and 1-2% of GDP recommended by Heggie (2004) for sustainable road maintenance and total road expenditures, respectively. However, it was established that the maintenance index had fallen drastically to 0.40% and 0.44% for the years 2013 and 2014, respectively, while the total road expenditure remained high at 3.71% and 3.51% for 2013 and 2014, respectively.

In real terms, the total budget needs for new construction had risen by about 643% for the period 2012 – 2016, the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) as enshrined in the Sixth National Development Plan (SNDP). This was due to the recently launched Link Zambia 8000 Project whose implementation was tied the SNDP. The study showed that concurrent implementation of the Link Zambia 8000 and other scheduled routine and periodic maintenance projects would demand an approximated US$9.914 billion for the period 2012 – 2016, taking into account the increase in construction unit costs, against the projected total realigned SNDP budget of USD3.459 billion. In estimating the total expenditure for the period 2012 to 2014, both years included, the study established that about US$2.79 billion had been spent. This would, therefore, imply a gross deviation if the program objectives of the SNDP were to be attained by 2016.

The escalating construction costs pose a huge challenge to the efficient utilization of available road finances. The quantum jump of about 16% and 22% in the unit costs for Trunk, Main, and District Roads and Urban Roads, respectively from 2011 to 2013 reflects declining economic fortunes which hinge on impairing effective road asset management. The increase of 16% was congruent with a rise in diesel pump price of 15% for the same period.

A key conclusion was that the deplorable road network conditions in the face of such a huge funding gap demands for an optimized Core Road Network, one which is much smaller than the 40,454km currently under the care of the Road Development Agency. Such an assertion was heavily promoted by the respondents during the survey, and is supported by the fact not all the required resources could be made available to meet the needs of existing Core Road Network. For how else could such a heavy pour of resources into the road network fail to yield an improved road condition in accordance with road asset management? The study’s determination of the low embrace of techno-economic and detailed engineering designs in road construction as reflected in an average expenditure of 5.2% of the Annual Work Plans in the period 2006-2014 probably speaks volumes about why the quality of newly constructed roads and their associated short life cycles has been a subject of public discourse.

Other conclusions of the study included the following:

1. Legal and Institutional Framework:

Zambia has a functional legal and institutional framework in place necessary for effective and efficient road asset management. However, some inadequacies do exist therein due to absence of a predefined balance between maintenance and construction.

2. Financial Support to the Road Sector:

The nation has been offering sufficient support to the road sector, when measured in relation to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the period 2006-2012. The year 2013 and 2014, and perhaps beyond, reflected a major policy shift to upgrading at the expense of maintenance; thereby contravening good road asset management principles. This incongruence led to inefficiencies in the nation’s road asset management.

3. Construction Unit Costs:

The sharp rise in construction costs lead increased the projected needs budget from USD$4.437 billion to US$9.914 billion from 2012 to 2016.

4. Private Finance Initiative:

Private finance initiative had a role to play in the Zambian road sector, and this was supported by the legislative arrangements in place such as the PPP Act No. 14 of 2009, but that for some reason, SI No. 73 of 2013 for Road Tolling still empowered the Road Development Agency to collect road tolls without the involvement of the private participation.

5. Use of Scientific Tools:

Highway Management System was in place at the RDA but the expenditure framework was not directed at the optimized maintenance interventions, thereby leading to the danger of wasted resources due to over-application of resources on roads which need less maintenance, or the erosion of the asset due to under-budgeting on roads which require more resources for the appropriate maintenance.

In order to safeguard an efficient road network through asset management, the following recommendations were made:

It is the author’s belief that the summary provided here covers the essential material and that it was not intended in any way to be a replacement for the project to which the reader, who has sufficient time, is now invited.

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

The relative importance of road transport in the Zambian economy has increased over the decades, to some level where road transport constituted about 71% of freight in 2008^[1], although the figure quoted in the Transport Policy document was about 80%^[2] in 2002. There might be fluctuations in the figure quoted for each year but, with the apparent deterioration of existing railway transport infrastructure, an even higher estimate could be posted to date. The gazetted road network is about 67,000km^[3] compared with the railway network which is estimated at 2,400km (1,200km for Zambia Railways and 1,000km for TAZARA^[4] ). The huge disparity in network coverage is also reflected in budgetary allocation for the two transportation sub-sectors where, for instance, the Sixth National Development 2013-2016 allocations reflect the total budget of ZMW16.869 billion for roads and ZMW1.709 billion for railways.

Indisputably, the flexibility and versatility of a road transport system, due to its point-to-point distribution of freight and people can more easily be achieved where a well-developed road network exists. However, it must be stated without hesitation that an efficient road transport system is important for economic development, as transport costs constitute a significant part of the cost structure of the goods that a country produces or imports. If transport costs become unnecessarily high, then the country’s products lose their competitive advantage in comparison with goods from other countries. Needless to mention, there is a cost that comes with any road transport system. Road transport costs include not only the cost of constructing and maintaining the road network, but also vehicle operating costs, which increase as roads deteriorate due to increased vehicle maintenance costs, and the costs associated with increased time-in-transit. Costing and cost recovery of road infrastructure has been a subject of many debates world-over and a host of solutions and models have been developed over the years in response to this challenge.

Raising the required finances for road construction and maintenance, and subsequent allocation to respective road programs can be a huge challenge for an emerging country like Zambia. This can lead to inefficiencies in road asset management as is evidently demonstrated in the declining road asset value over time. Political and economic landscape, institutional, and legal framework all play a vital role in resource mobilization and allocation strategies. The challenge of constrained resources should serve as a cardinal guide in striking the crucial balance required between funds allocated to road development and those allocated to road maintenance.

It is important for the fiscus to also consider the additional needs that require to be addressed on an annual basis, such as the clearance of backlog maintenance which results, largely, from deferment of scheduled maintenance due to insufficient annual budgetary allocation to the road sector maintenance programs. This reflects more significantly in the deteriorated road network condition in spite of the low volume of traffic on Zambia’s roads compared to other bigger economies.

Government’s recognition of these challenges is reflected in the changing legal and institutional framework in the country’s road transport sector which has enabled the creation of several agencies such as the National Road Fund Agency (for resource mobilization, management, and disbursement), Road Development Agency (for planning, care and construction of roads), Road Transport and Safety Agency (for road safety and vehicle licensing), and National Council for Construction (for contractor regulation, training, and capacity building).

The challenges, however, persist in spite of all these road sector reforms. This, essentially, served as the greatest motivation for my diagnostic study into the road transport sub-sector.

1.2 Problem statement

The condition of the existing Zambian road network has continued to deteriorate unabated over the years. This is in spite of huge government pronouncements that road transport infrastructure is the engine of Zambia’s economic development and growth, and hence the vast sums of money which the government has been pouring into the road sector. The exorbitant road construction costs have posed additional challenges to the fiscus, thereby constraining both the quantity and quality of road infrastructure that could be constructed and maintained at any given time. Recent budgetary allocations appear to be inclined towards new road construction aimed at linking Zambia, more than to road maintenance which plays a pivotal role in road asset management.

This scenario, in itself, creates a perception that policy pronouncements are at variance to policy documents which promote sustainable economic development through efficient road investments, thereby raising fears of typical market failure scenario. This could be seen as being paradoxical in that the actual financing strategies are skewed towards road construction, a preference of political office holders for their increased visibility on the ground, rather than as a prudent way of managing the limited road maintenance funds. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the substantial portion of resources utilized in road construction comes from concessional and commercial loans which the future generations have an inbred mandate to pay back. Worse still, the existing road infrastructure has created a huge backlog of maintenance due to deferred maintenance resulting from annual budget deficits.

Over the years, it has been difficult to establish congruence between government pronouncements and the actual road business strategies in the implementing agencies. The difficult in harmonizing the two parts has often lead to the belief that every political pronouncement becomes government policy and, as such, implementing agencies should immediately begin to procure contracts to implement politically pronounced road projects. Consequently, this has often led to serious budget overruns due, firstly, to unplanned expenditure and, secondly, variations due to scope increase resulting from project implementation without having prior designs.

The net effect of this is that maintenance of existing roads has tended to suffer at the expense of new construction due to availability of deferment options on the maintenance of existing roads. However, persistent budget deficits leading to ever constrained annual budgets have, in most cases, entirely closed the window for undertaking scheduled preventive and restorative road maintenance works. This has led to high operating inefficiencies of existing roads due to the high level of pavement degradation, with the eventual effect of higher vehicle operating costs, longer travel-times, driver and passenger discomfort, and ultimately higher agency pavement replacement costs. In the end, the economy has continued suffering due to the ever-widening maintenance funding gap.

1.3 Aims and objectives

In this study, I aim to carry out an analysis of road financing strategies in Zambia, taking a special look into the past ten years, with the view to ascertaining the extent to which roads budgets have been employed to fund new construction and maintenance. I also aim to establish that there is a mismatch in allocation of resources for roads in terms of needs and policy, in which new road construction is highly favored in preference to maintenance. This mismatch, if it exists, will espouse some paradoxes which exist between the policies and actual government maintenance strategies. I further aim to establish the sustainability of existing road financing paradigms in Zambia and their consequential effects on the national economy as whole. Finally, I will attempt to provide answers on the way forward for our road sector.

1.4 Scope of the study

Broadly, the study is limited to the past ten years of the Zambian transport sector development, a period which has seen phenomenal policy and institutional reforms in the transport sector, coupled by the unprecedented investments in the road transport sector in particular. Emphasis is placed on road sector financing and performance taking into account resource mobilization, allocation, and disbursements to demonstrate the paradoxes that have led to declining road asset value. More specifically, a comparison of budgetary allocations between new construction and maintenance projects is made to reveal the real thrust of road sector strategies in comparison with policy guidelines. A detailed analysis is conducted on the projected road sector needs and unit rates in order to make congruent comparisons with projected resources.

Results of literature review have been presented in Chapter 2, while research methodology is presented in Chapter 3. The data collected was analyzed and findings presented in Chapter 4. The conclusions have been presented in Chapter 5, while the recommendations have been presented in Chapter 6.

1.5 Significance of the study

The significance of this study is that it will help put into context the practical challenges that the Road Development Agency and the National Road Fund Agency face annually in their quest to effective and efficient road asset management and financing in Zambia, as the analysis is based on tangible, rather than hypothetical information. Primarily, the outcome of this study should help road sector agencies and policy makers to devise strategies which will remain congruent with the transport policy drive for sustainable road construction and maintenance.

Further, it is hoped that the results will greatly assist future researchers who may not have direct access to the data sources which the author has. The lessons learnt will be significant in helping the author to contribute to future transport policy reviews and realignments as the nation seeks to find sustainable solutions to road asset financing and management in an evolving economic set-up. The beauty of it is that the author already shares an internal environment with major policy makers and project implementers, and this adds to the obvious personal benefit and development in the road transport sector.

Clearly, the primary focus of this study is to help increase the knowledge about road financing strategies and road asset management practices in Zambia in order to help solve future problems in the road sector.

2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Introduction

In this section, the author sought to gain a deeper and more holistic approach to understanding the paradigms that shape policies and strategies regarding investments in road transportation, as well as to reflect a bit more on comparative literature which advocates for specific maintenance philosophies for diverse countries as a means of road asset management. The review of literature was taken on regional and international platforms in order to interlock with the best practices that are emerging on the global stage. Reference materials from the modern to near-modern sources added solidity to the review of literature. Primarily, key literature has been confined to the period up to 2006, while literature older than that has been sparingly and strategically used in exceptional circumstances to extend the debate.

Most importantly, the author had to be fully aware about the dangers of plagiarism in scholarly works. The exposure of these dangers needed to be made clear and catalogued prior to going deeper in the act of reviewing literature. The candidate support pack for Higher National Diploma in Management, Management Research, quotes Booth et al. (2003, p. 167) as having defined plagiarism as:

You plagiarize when, intentionally or not, you use someone else’s words or ideas but fail to credit that person. You plagiarize even when you do credit the author but use his exact words without so indicating with quotation marks or block indentation. You also plagiarize when you use words so close to those in your source, that if you placed your work next to the source, you would see that you could not have written what you did without the source at your elbow. ^[5]

The book further cautions that the implication of plagiarism is fairly straight forward, adding that “if it’s not your work, cite whose it is.” (p. 42). Furthermore, it is noted that “the purpose of a literature review is it to provide a critical analysis of the current ‘knowledge claims’ regarding your chosen research topic,” and that the following guidelines about literature review (p. 40) were found to be cardinal in a research:

- Do not be uncritical or hypercritical – be balanced, otherwise you will lose credibility.
- Do not lack focus or have too many focuses – if you don’t have any focus, your literature review will be too vague. If there are too many focuses then it won’t investigate any of them to a sufficient depth.
- Always link the literature review to research questions – this is essential! If the literature review doesn’t link to the questions then there will be no clear logic behind choices of data collection methods or conceptual framework (particularly in quantitative data).
- Leave enough time to research and review literature – not everything you read will be relevant and some documents will contain a lot of unnecessary information. Reading and understanding takes time, so don’t try to rush this part.
- Use the correct sources – take care in the sources you choose: at the least they might not contain anything useful; at their worst they may be misleading or inaccurate.

2.2 Analysis of the Project Title

The project under study is entitled: “A Diagnostic Study into Road Financing Paradoxes which have led to Inefficient Road Asset Management in Zambia”. Table 1 below paraphrases the project title to the reader about the context in which the study is being done, and also stands as a guide to the author in his study.

Table 1: Project Title Definition

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Main source: www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/

2.3 The Economic Question of Road Investments

The economic question about road investment will continue to resonate throughout this treatise due to its multi-dimensional nature. For a start, we take note of Eberts’ (2010)^[6] observation that the interface between transportation investment and economic development has broad ramifications that go beyond transportation’s basic purpose of moving goods and people from one place to another. Whereas there is no doubt that transportation is essential in the operation of a market economy, Eberts says much still needs to be understood about ways in which an efficient transportation system can improve the productivity of the economy.

The strong linkage between national economies and transportation investments continue to be major subjects of discussion at many conferences. In paper summaries of the 18th International Transport Symposium held in Madrid in 2009^[7], the Joint Transport Research Centre presents a number of view-points that emerged during the conference. For instance, Mr. Jack Short is cited as having said that:

Investing in transport is not just a response to growing demand, but can be a force for driving growth if it is well targeted and makes good use of scarce financial resources. For this, improved appraisal is essential, with Cost-Benefit Analysis and Environmental Assessment used strategically to find good solutions across a comprehensive range of potential responses to capacity problems.

This adds clarity to the need of project appraisal prior to making any transport investments, and only those projects which offer the greatest return to the investment need prioritizing. During an appraisal process, the issue of costs and benefits takes centre stage. The fundamental question of road transport investment, actually, relates to pricing and cost recovery. Harvey and Jowsey (2007; 235-236) observe that transportation infrastructure is a public or collective good which, though indivisible, but one in which:

It is possible to exclude ‘free-riders’ by levying fees, charges or tolls. One reason for not doing so is that the costs of collection are regarded as being disproportionate to the revenue raised. A more fundamental reason is that with most indivisible goods, the use by one extra person does not impose a sacrifice on others since there is no addition to the cost of provision. This ‘non-rivalry’ means that, because MC is nil, the maximum benefits can only be enjoyed if no charge is made (MC = MR = 0), the full cost being met by the State from taxation.^[8]

Indeed, taxation is only one of the pricing policies, but borrowing and user-charges are other options which the State has at its disposal in raising transportation investment funds. The ideal case is for long-term government borrowing to cover only spending on capital items. But Harvey and Jowsey (2007; 240) see two major difficulties with such schemes. The first difficult is that the criterion may be laid down that over time revenue should cover costs in which case it then becomes impossible to produce up to the point where price equals marginal cost; and the second is that fixed costs may be so high that total cost can never be covered by a single price.

There are additional economic factors that actually affect the provision of road transportation service such as issues of political economy which may have an impact on the form and outcomes of the road sector. Wales & Wild (2012)^[9] shed more light on market failure characteristics which may affect the road sector, and these include: tendency towards monopoly; positive and negative externalities; information asymmetries; and merit goods.

They contend that:

Roads have many of the characteristics of a good that lead to market failure, especially in rural areas. Their tendency to be non-rival and non-excludable, combined with considerable externalities, means they are unlikely to be provided to a socially optimal level without the presence of non-toll sources of funding and returns, whether commercially provided (e.g. owners of large mines or plantations who need easy market access) or political (e.g. state construction and maintenance financed by taxation of economic activity or political returns from increases in support or the ability to more easily exercise authority). (p.7)

These characteristics, they assert, seem to justify state intervention in the road system, although it is clear that this is not unproblematic, given the potential for rent seeking and that roads are not a merit good in the strictest sense, as people are largely aware of the likely benefits that would accrue from the presence of a road and greater connectivity. However, the low traffic volumes that characterize Zambia’s road network and most of her peer countries in Sub-Saharan Africa poses huge challenges to user-pays principle, and thereby discourage the much needed private finance initiatives. This may be coupled with inadequate private finance initiative legislation.

The capability for the project to generate revenues, in terms of road infrastructure, is dependent on the level of traffic volume, as well as the road-users’ capability to pay the set tariffs. In most developed countries, meeting the minimum traffic threshold can be quite easy, but for most of Sub-Saharan African countries, traffic levels are so low that public-private partnerships (PPPs) have remained unattractive. The Table 2 below attempts to demonstrate the disparities that exist in vehicular population in selected nations around the world. The low per capita traffic levels in Sub-Saharan Africa in comparison with most of the developed world is evident in the table, and it is thus inconceivable to assume that investments models that seem to work very well in the developed could just be adopted and be expected to perform the same way in Sub-Saharan Africa. The cherished economies of scale which would attract adequate private finances in to Sub-Saharan Africa would require possible pooling of regional road networks to come up with an attractive package to the private investor.

Table 2: Global Outlook Human and Vehicular Demographics (2010-2012)

illustration not visible in this excerpt^[10] ^[11] ^[12] ^[13] ^[14]

*Source: World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.VEH.NVEH.P3)

It’s apparent that traffic levels, therefore, play a critical role in economic analysis, or project appraisal, and is thus a very delicate parameter as it hinges on the costs and benefits attributed to a project, but which have likely wider economic impacts (WEI) often leading to economic development of the nation. Litman (2013; 2) makes the following observation:

Conventional transport economic evaluation tends to focus on certain impacts (travel time, congestion delay, vehicle operation costs, and some accident costs), but overlooks and undervalues others that are often significant (parking costs, vehicle ownership costs, and incremental costs of induced travel). As a result of these omissions, what analysts report as the economic impacts (or net present value, or benefit/cost ratio) of a transport project are often a subset of total economic effects. More comprehensive analysis considers a wider set of economic impacts.

Transportation policy and planning decisions tend to support economic development to the degree they increase efficiency by reducing unit costs (cents per tonne-mile or dollars per passenger-trip) and favoring higher value travel (emergency, freight, service, business travel and high occupancy vehicles) over lower value travel. Policies that reflect efficient market principles (suitable consumer options, cost-based pricing, efficient prioritization, and neutral public policies) tend to support economic development. Market distortions that under-price transport activity or unnecessarily reduce accessibility options can result in economically inefficient travel, in which marginal costs exceed marginal benefits.^[15]

It is critical to point out here that benefits resulting from cost-savings for transport users can be considered in two ways: producer surplus methods and consumer surplus methods, in which producer surplus methods entail that transport cost reductions lower producers’ input and output costs, thereby resulting in higher net incomes for producers; while consumer surplus methods entail that benefits result if savings accrue to the users as a reduction in transport costs or charges. Khisty & Lall (2009; 43) define consumer surplus as “a measure of the monetary value made available to consumers by the existence of a facility… [which] is defined as the difference between what consumers might be willing to pay for a service and what they actually pay.”

Whatever the case might be, traders and firms are always pleased if the cost of doing business is lowered, much more if the cost of transportation and vehicle operating costs are lowered. The resulting effect is increased disposable income, a catalyst for higher spending, and subsequent growth in the economy. Economics plays a vital role in determining highway transportation investments and, at the same time, highway transportation investments help national economic growth; the two are entertwined.

2.4 Legal and Institutional Framework

The past ten years of Zambia’s road transport sector has been anchored on the Transport Policy of 2002, Road Sector Investment Program Phase 2 (RoadSIP II) of 2002, and the Legal and Institutional Frameworks based on three road sector agencies of 2002. These are the Public Roads Act No. 12 of 2002 which created the Road Development Agency, Road Traffic Act No. 11 of 2002 which created the Road Transport and Safety Agency, and the National Road Fund Agency Act No. 13 of 2002.

In the first instance, the Transport Policy^[16], as a critical component of government’s road transport development process, defines the following strategic goals:

1. Provide adequate financially and economically sustainable road transport infrastructure able to facilitate domestic, regional, and international trade;
2. Improve access to jobs as a means of poverty reduction, through increased economic activity in the road transport industry; and
3. Ensure the provision of safe, efficient, integrated and environmentally friendly road transport system which meets the needs of road users, and which supports regional road transport strategies, for sustainable development.

More specific goals, divided into three priority categories, are set in Section 4.2.1 of the Transport Policy (p. 23), primarily focused on:

1. Roads which aid economic recovery and development;
2. Roads which bring environmental and social benefits; and
3. Preserving investment already made in roads through maintenance.

The Transport Policy document argues that this would satisfy the national goal of working constantly to reduce transportation problems through planned programs and further called for development of an institutional framework able to offer competitive terms and conditions of employment as well as development of an appropriate organizational structure for efficient management of the road sector (p. 23).

Further review of literature shows that the response was immediate. Three strategic road sector institutions were born through Acts of Parliament passed in 2002 after the Roads and Road Traffic Act, CAP 464 of the Laws of Zambia was repealed. The Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA), was created through the Road Traffic Act No. 11 of 2002, and the Road Development Agency (RDA) through the Public Roads Act No. 12 of 2002. Similarly, the National Road Fund Agency (NRFA) was created through an Act No. 13 of 2002. The Committee of Ministers on Road Maintenance Initiative (RMI) was also created to provide overall oversight to the road sector agencies. It is clearly intentioned and provided for in Section 6 of all the Acts of Parliament for the road sector agencies that they were to be run as semi-autonomous body-corporate, managed by Boards of Directors, and capable of suing and being sued in their individual capacity.

To show the severity of its intentions, the government developed a bankable ten-year road sector investment strategy. The Road Sector Investment Program (RoadSIP II) Bankable Document was finalized in October 2003 in readiness for implementation from 2004 to 2013. It is evident that:

The Bankable Document presents the results and a review of the lessons learned during ROADSIP I [1998 – 2003] , key findings from associated studies, and concerns raised by various stakeholders compiled by the National Task Force and a team of Consultants, being Deloitte & Touche, E.G. Petit and Partners, Jeffares & Green (Z) Limited, and LASCO Engineering (“the Consultants”), to identify the way forward and formulate a financial strategy for implementing an action plan for ROADSIP II.^[17]

The civil works ten-year budget for RoadSIP II was approximated at USD 1,586 million (p.17) with broadened objectives of the program, as indicated in the Bankable Document (p.3), including, but not limited to the following:

a) Rehabilitation/Periodic and routine maintenance of the Core Road Network (40,113 Km) through various funding agencies.
b) Improve road conditions for Trunk, Main, District, Primary Feeder roads, tourist roads and selected urban roads through full and accessibility improvements as per “need” and priorities.
c) Institutional strengthening of the construction industry through appropriate approaches.
d) Create employment opportunities through appropriate road interventions.
e) Improve Road Safety as per Road Safety Action plan.
f) Improve Environmental Management by building capacity.
g) Improve Rural Transport Mobility through road improvements.
h) Improve management of Community Roads through the Road Development Agency.
i) Address poverty and HIV/AIDS countrywide through PRSP and National Policy on HIV/AIDS.

According to the Bankable Document, a compelling reason advanced by the study for implementing the RoadSIP II was that: “Over a ten-year period, it is considered that the program will become self-sustaining from internal resources to facilitate routine and periodic maintenance.” (p. 19).

Key RoadSIP II implementing ministries were identified in the RoadSIP II Bankable Document. These are: Ministry of Works and Supply, Ministry of Transport and Communications, and Ministry of Local Government and Housing. Meanwhile, resource mobilization remained under the Ministry of Finance. The institutional framework placed the Road Development Agency (RDA) under the Ministry of Works and Supply, Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) under the Ministry of Transport and Communications, and National Road Fund Agency (NRFA) under the Ministry of Finance. Ministerial reorganizations effected in 2011 have since seen RDA and RTSA both fall under the reorganized Ministry of Transport, Communications, Works, and Supply (MTCWS).

Section 11 (2) of the Public Roads Act^[18] mandates the Minister, on recommendation of the RDA, to appoint, by statutory order, a road authority in respect of all or any district roads in any area including a local authority area. The road authority so appointed becomes responsible for the construction, care, and maintenance of district roads with expense incurred paid from the Road Fund. Sections 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 of the Public Roads Act extend the appointment of road authorities to branch roads, urban roads, rural roads, estate roads, and park roads, respectively.

Specific functions of the Road Development Agency are stipulated in Section 4 of the Public Roads Act No. 12 of 2002. Section 4(1) states that: “The functions of the Agency shall be to plan, manage and coordinate the road network in the country.” Pursuant to Section 4(2) and without prejudice to the generality of Sub-section (1) the Agency shall also:

1. Carry out routine and emergency maintenance of public roads through its employees or independent contractors (bullet a);
2. Conduct such studies as it may consider necessary for the development, maintenance, and improvement of the road network in Zambia (bullet b);
3. In consultation with the National Road Fund Agency, recommend to the Minister funding for development of new roads (bullet j);
4. Enforce axle load control (bullet o);
5. Etc.

Clearly, the RDA’s exposition makes it easy for the agency to perform the assigned functions except with the function on recommendation to the Minister funding for development of new roads which normally comes by way of political pronouncements, or party manifestos. In this manner, it becomes difficult for the agency to make appropriate recommendations as some choices may already have been made at levels of authority higher than the Board of Directors of the agency.

The Ministry of Finance mobilizes resources for road maintenance and construction, and channels them to the National Road Fund Agency (NRFA). According to Section 4(1) of National Road Fund Agency Act, the agency is mandated to perform the following functions^[19]:

1. administer and manage the Road Fund;
2. prepare and publish audited annual accounts of the Road Fund;
3. recommend to the Minister fuel levy and other road user charges and tariffs as required;
4. recommend to the Minister projects for funding;
5. allocate resources-

(a) for the construction, maintenance and rehabilitation of roads based on a percentage of the annual work program of the Road Development Agency; and
(b) for road transport, traffic and safety management based on a percentage of the annual work program of the Road Transport and Safety Agency;

6. in consultation with the Road Development Agency, recommend funding for development of new roads; and

7. undertake such other activities as are conducive or incidental to its functions under this Act.

The major challenge of the NRFA is to ensure that adequate resources are available for meeting the project financial obligations since releases by the Ministry of Finance are made in accordance with the ministry’s capabilities to mobilize resources for the whole economy. As it stands, the Ministry of Finance retains the full responsibility for committing the government to any form of debt, and the NRFA would not, by any means, be able to access finance to bridge funding deficits unless legislative changes are permitted. Nonetheless, public-private partnership (PPP) Act No. 14 of 2009 was enacted to create an enabling environment for private finance initiatives in the national development process. It was hoped that through this avenue, the nation would see more direct private participation in road construction and maintenance through ventures such as Build, Operate, and Transfer (BOT). Currently, concession type of contracts in road construction and maintenance are still absent in the country, and the need to investigate why the apprehension exists cannot be over-emphasized here.

The most recent legal instrument to find its place in Zambia’s road sector is the Tolls Act No. 14 of 2011. It is the first time road tolling is being implemented in Zambia and the issuance of Statutory Instrument SI No. 73 of 2013, introducing road tolling, became effective November 1, 2013. In spite of the Tolls Act having been passed in 2011, the actualization of the toll collection came, of course, against the backdrop of a huge infrastructure funding gap identified in the 2014 national budget. It should be pointed out that the Road Development Agency is currently responsible for toll collection and no private sector involvement has been envisaged. The collected revenue is deposited in the government accounts held at Bank of Zambia and is intended to be channeled to NRFA through the Ministry of Finance.

2.5 Maintenance Philosophies

A good road maintenance philosophy is an incentive to sustainable road financing and the well-being of the economy as a whole. Road maintenance philosophies should be designed to reflect good road asset management principles and practices. This section takes a critical look at road maintenance philosophies and practice at a national, regional, and international stage. The stress placed on practices in Sub-Saharan Africa is crucial in correlating perspectives with the Zambian case.

Gwilliam et al. (2008; 4)^[20] bemoans the lack of requisite expenditure on appropriate maintenance strategies in Sub-Saharan African Countries, noting that while road sector reforms focused on maintenance, there was evidence of a persistent capital bias in spending. He observed that investment accounts for two-thirds of the total spending, leaving only a third for maintenance, which, based on practices elsewhere in the world, he argued, was contrary to the requirement that the balance between investment and maintenance be fifty-fifty. His belief was, however, that high capital expenditure might be justified in some cases by large backlogs in rehabilitation projects in some countries.

In the case of Zambia, the Transport Policy document is highly categorical on prioritizing routine and periodic maintenance of the Core Road Network (CRN) rather than investments in capital projects. The realization of the significance of road maintenance led to the formation of the Committee of Ministers on Road Maintenance Initiative (RMI), which was supported by the World Bank. Consequently, Road Sector Investment Program Phase I, RoadSIP I (1997 – 2003) and RoadSIP II (2004 – 2013) were drawn up to implement the maintenance strategies.

In spite of such categorical disposition of the transport policy, Zambia Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (ZIPAR) has undertaken some research in Zambia’s road sector whose outcomes point to the contrary practices. They observe that:

Because Zambia is one of the largest and most sparsely populated countries in Africa, only a small proportion of its roads carry 150 vehicles per day, let alone 300; and these are already paved. The implication is that very few paving projects are justified on economic grounds. The above thresholds have been largely ignored since Independence; many roads have been paved despite having traffic levels well below 150 vehicles per day. 22 As a result, Zambia had the highest proportion of ‘over–engineered’ roads (paved roads with less than 300 vehicles per day) in a survey of 21 African countries (Gwilliam et al. 2008:37). In other words, Zambia has wasted considerable resources on paving roads because the vehicle operating cost savings from paving are not sufficient to outweigh the extra construction costs, even in the long term. The proportion of over-engineered roads will increase further as a result of the new upgrading projects contracted since 2008.^[21]

In trying to answer the question why the Zambian government continues to pave roads at the expense of maintenance and rehabilitation despite their poor economics, the study found that political consideration usually dominated resource allocation decisions in a continent where road investments were invariably popular as they were the most visible ways for governments to show that they are doing something about development. The study concluded that political pressure to pave was effectively crowding out maintenance and rehabilitation expenditure. This is supported by Addo-Abedi et al.^[22] who, in his general perspective of Sub-Saharan Africa, observed that roads can be used as a powerful political tool and the decision of which roads to maintain, rehabilitate or upgrade could become an emotive one, adding that politicians see themselves as the ones accountable to the people and should be the ones to ultimately make decisions.

This case, in principle, fails to promote good asset management practices defined in Clause 4.2.2 (b): Policy Objectives, in which it is required to “preserve investments through sustainable maintenance management of road network and efficient axle load control.”^[23] Further, political pressure would stand as a clear abrogation of the RoadSIP II Bankable Document^[24], which documented a nationally accepted strategy for maintaining and rehabilitating a clearly defined Core Road Network of about 40,000km.

The bad practice of road asset management is also highlighted by Harral et al. (2011)^[25] who observed that maintaining roads was rarely seen as important; and as such, it attracted neither the funding nor the expertise that in highway agencies around the world gravitated to big new construction projects. He further argued on the contrary, that prolonged neglect of maintenance could become costly and disruptive not only for road agencies, which have to spend more to rebuild roads once they have begun to fall apart, but also for road users, who suffer discomfort, slower speeds, and higher vehicle wear and tear on bad roads.

The authors cited above are in full agreement that preventive maintenance is the key to effective and efficient road asset management and that unless politicians give credence to maintenance, the continuous upgrading of roads to bituminous standard without any regard to traffic and the wider economic impacts, the road asset would persistently be costly to the economy. It is also clear that an inefficient road asset deprives the nation of its competitiveness in local and regional trade.

Joining the debate on road maintenance, Zimmerman & Yurek (2012)^[26] observed that, preserving and maintaining the condition of highway assets is a key component to enabling state highway agencies provide a safe, smooth, and sustainable transportation system. While the construction phase of a highway life cycle often received the most attention from elected officials and the public, they argued, responsibility for maintaining the roadway infrastructure assets was typically the longest of the phases of the highway life cycle and one of the most important factors in determining the frequency with which assets needed to be reconstructed or replaced. They added, further, that as many transportation agencies have realized, ongoing investments in planned maintenance activities are a cost-effective way to postponing more costly treatments down the road and an important strategy for achieving customer satisfaction with the road system.

Due to its important role in the operation of efficient economic system, the road asset should be properly cared for using scientific tools. Scientific measures of road performance, such as roughness measures, should be closely monitored, and minimum thresholds set which should trigger maintenance, rather than waiting until the asset is visibly in a state of disrepair.

An ideal tool for good road asset management is the use of a road roughness index, more specifically IRI^[27] and by setting predefined thresholds; periodic maintenance could be planned and undertaken timely, in order to avoid the road condition requiring the more expensive rehabilitation, let alone reconstruction. The use of automated pavement condition measurements to indicate ideal pavement preservation and maintenance options is highly recommended in almost all modern texts on pavement engineering. Fig. 1 below typifies the general concept for maintenance philosophy.

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Source: RoadSIP II Bankable Document

Figure 1: Pavement Performance Curve over Time

Newer and more effective philosophies in asset management are hinged in performance based contracts.^[28] Zambia ranks among the Sub-Saharan giants of Chad and Tanzania and Zanzibar in implementing performance based road contracts (PBRCs) in maintaining unpaved roads. Currently, the country is implementing 1,100km^[29] in five districts under the Agriculture Development Support Project (ADSP) with support from the World Bank. These five-year projects have been running since 2009 and would be coming to the end in 2014. The pilot performance contracts involving 3,500km were launched in 2006 with budget support coming from the European Union (EU) for a period of four years. These projects were largely successful and served as motivation for the World Bank supported ADSP.

However, it is worthwhile noting that Zambia has had a long history of three-year routine maintenance performance contracts on urban roads and highways, which have been supported through the Road Fund since the mid-nineties following the establishment of the National Roads Board (now National Road Fund Agency). The initial scope was confined to vegetation control and de-silting of drainages, but more aspects of pothole patching and spot re-graveling have been incorporated in the revised tender dossiers launched in 2013 by the Road Development Agency.

However, at the peak of the quest for sustainable road maintenance initiatives in Zambia, and in what appears to be a paradigm shift, the government launched a program to upgrade 8,000km to bituminous standard at an estimated total cost of USD 6 billion over five years. Dubbed Link Zambia 8,000, the program was launched on Leopard’s Hill Road in September 2012^[30]. All being equal, this program would double the total paved road network on its completion. The reason advanced in support of the program by the proponents is “accelerated economic development by transforming Zambia from a landlocked country into a truly land-linked country”.

Admittedly, a third world country like Zambia, aiming so high in its development agenda, has every fiscal policy motivation in pursuing expansionary economic policies by increasing government spending. However, this also comes with increased public debt as annual interest charges accruing on bonds to finance the debt become the primary burden of the debt (Brue & Mcconnell, 2007; 325-333 )^[31]. Brue & Mcconnell further note that the perpetuity of public debt results from government’s constitutional authority to refinance public debt by selling new bonds and using proceeds to pay off holders of maturing bonds. They further point to an aspect of external public debt, which is part of the public debt owed to foreign citizens, firms, and institutions, and stress the negative attributes of this debt to burden future generations. It is their opinion that nations must borrow prudently and sustainably.

Therefore, as Zambia considers doubling the size of her paved road network, there is the need to heed advice on sustainable borrowing. In the context of Zambia, this appears to be an ever emotive issue. In December 2013, the Lusaka Times^[32] carried a headline “Current debt levels worrying – Felix Mutati.” The former Commerce, Trade, and Industry Minister, Hon. Felix Mutati, was quoted as having said that the rate at which Zambia was contracting external debt was becoming unsustainable, adding that “the PF government has doubled the country’s foreign debt stock in the last two years. He said the accumulation of foreign debt will make it difficult for the country to keep up with repayment schedules.” Hon. Mutati argued further, that there was nothing wrong with borrowing although he expressed worry that most of the projects the country was borrowing for were not going to reach completion any time soon, which meant that they would not bring immediate economic returns to assist the nation in servicing the debt.

The former minister’s possess legitimacy in the overall macro-economics of our nation as much as it does for most of Sub-Saharan African countries. It is pertinent that as we assess the question of prudence and sustainability in borrowing, we should also reports on actual maintenance. In his study of road maintenance funding in Sub-Saharan Africa, Pinard (2012: 87)^[33] drew up the following main findings and conclusions:

- Funding for routine maintenance (typically 60-70 percent) and, a lesser extent, for periodic maintenance (typically 50-60 percent) is increasing, but is still far short of the requirement to ensure sustainability of most countries’ networks. Thus the sourcing of additional funds for maintenance remains one of the biggest challenges faced … and programs will have to be developed to address this.
- Some countries tend to spend some of that part of the road fund earmarked for routine and periodic maintenance to address pressing backlog maintenance and rehabilitation. In the long term, this strategy is counterproductive and results in suboptimal utilization of the funds available for maintenance.
- Road conditions are reportedly improving … but they are relatively poor; well below 50 percent of roads are in good condition. Moreover, the improvements reported may be attributed in part to the significant interventions related to new construction, upgrading, and rehabilitation rather than to the increasing kilometrage of roads receiving maintenance attention…

The phenomenal US$6 billion “Link Zambia 8000” new road construction project, which is likely to draw the earmarked maintenance funds away from routine and periodic maintenance to upgrading projects could be seen as one falling within Pinard’s contextual summaries presented above. Notwithstanding the massive benefits which come with an improved road network, lessons learnt elsewhere within our sub-region should serve as a beacon to guide our planning in how we use limited resources to optimize road network competitiveness. Evidently, a road asset receiving less than the required care would continue wasting away more rapidly than it could be replaced. In the end, it becomes costly to implement rehabilitation and reconstruction programs.

To get an elaborate feel of the implications of road network disinvestments and or deferred maintenance in the absence of adequate resources, we take a look at what is happening in North Dakota, U.S. North Dakota may have been selected as a case study, but it is important to bear in mind that there are other states in the United States which are implementing similar solutions on their road networks. The states of Texas and West Virginia add to the long list of states ripping paved roads to gravel in the face of increased opposition to raising gasoline taxes for funding road projects. Text Box 1 below summarizes the case study and the lessons can be learnt.

Text Box 1: Case Study on Asset Management Challenge in North Dakota

Infrastructure in North Dakota: A Rebirth of Gravel Roads

April 29, 2010 , Michael Arndt:

“It’s a lot uglier up here than people think,” says the highway chief.

A frequent indicator of development is a country’s miles of paved roadways. By this measure, at least one corner of America is in reverse. Stutsman County, N.D., a 2,304-square-mile stretch of sparsely populated plains, maintains 233 miles of asphalt roads. The county road department says it can afford to care for just 48 miles, so it’s starting to convert the pavement back to gravel.

Four times over the past 22 years, the county has tried to increase property taxes to pay for repairs to highways last paved decades ago. Each time, voters said no. In June, they’ll be asked again to approve higher property and sales taxes to fix roads.

Stutsman County (pop. 22,241) doesn’t seem especially troubled when compared with other parts of the U.S. Its jobless rate in February was 4%, down from 4.3% five years ago. In addition to wheat and soybean farms, it boasts Jamestown College, an airport (with two paved runways), and a Cargill malt plant. Great River Energy, which supplies electricity to rural locales, is building a power plant and a $300 million bio-fuels refinery. Money magazine ranked Jamestown, the county seat, among the 100 best small towns in 2007.

But Jamestown's sales tax is already 7% vs. 5% for the rest of the state, and county Highway Superintendent Mike Zimmerman thinks the latest tax hike effort will also fail. Regardless of the referendum’s outcome, the county plans to grind up 10 miles of potholed roads this spring and summer to turn them into gravel. Other counties in North Dakota may do the same as they run short of cash. Financially, Zimmerman says, “It’s a lot uglier up here than people think.”

Lessons learnt:

i. No nation has unlimited resources for road construction and maintenance.
ii. Always use appropriate and cheaper methods to maintain the road network.
iii. Spend wisely by optimizing the road network to be maintained.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177016136951.htm. Accessed July 10, 2013. Story published by Michael Arndt, April 29, 2010

Effective and efficient management of the road asset requires a clear and strict strategic and policy framework which is well-suited to the economy of a given nation. Banjo et al. (2012)^[34] highlights a typical framework for addressing, among other issues, asset management and maintenance. The following framework, shown in Text Box 2, was adapted by Banjo from the Cambodian rural road policy and strategy model. The principles are, however, applicable to all types of road network across the globe. The lessons from the framework have also been included in the Text Box.

Text Box 2: Adapted Asset Management Policy Framework

Developing a rural road policy and strategy: a checklist of areas of interest applied in Cambodia

Ownership

- Who owns the various types of asset?

Asset management and maintenance

- Who is responsible for maintaining the various categories of assets?
- Who will categorize and inventory the individual assets?
- What are the emergency, routine, and periodic maintenance requirements?
- Who will finance maintenance within resource constraints?
- Who will plan the maintenance works?
- Who will carry out and manage the maintenance works?
- Who will supervise the maintenance works?
Asset development
- What are the priorities for network development/expansion?
- Who will identify needs and evaluate and authorize construction works?
- Who will finance the construction works?
- Who will plan the construction works?
- Who will carry out and manage the construction works?
- Who will supervise the construction works?
- What will be the balance between expansion of the network and preservation of what is rehabilitated?

Appropriate technology

- What are the adopted technologies and reasons for using them?

Lessons learnt:

i. The nation should clearly define ownership of the road network.
ii. Who will plan for the care, finance, supervise, and carry out maintenance should be categorically defined.
iii. Development (capital works) of the road network must have pre-defined priorities, financing arrangements, construction, and supervision strategies.
iv. The balance between road network development and maintenance should be clearly defined.
v. Use of appropriate technologies is a must for optimizing limited resources.

Source: Banjo, George, et al. (2012). Rural Transport, Improving its Contribution to Growth and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. Working Paper No. 93. SSATP. pp. 56-57.

2.6 Resource Mobilization

Resource mobilization plays the most important role in ensuring sustainable road maintenance and development. The more the resources that can be mobilized, the bigger and better the road network can be. It is important to realize the global challenges of resource mobilization for highways. The Transportation Research Board (2010) observed of the United States that, “the need for innovation in highway sector has never been greater. The highway system is under severe stress and grossly underfunded. [While] the current spikes in energy prices could have profound effects on highway transportation, the consequences of which are poorly understood.” ^[35]

The National Road Fund Agency identifies the following sources funding which support the road sector in Zambia:

- Road Fund, made up of Fuel Levy, Road Taxes, Weighbridge Fees and Fines. Tolling revenues would be included 2014 onwards.
- GRZ^[36] Funds, as appropriated by Parliament.
- External Funds, from donors and international cooperating partners, etc.

Table 3: Road Sector Financing Matrix

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Source: National Road Fund Agency

Road infrastructure investments, like any other infrastructure investments, have the potential to spur economic growth. However, it is also important to plan the investments to take place in a prudent and sustainable manner. Borrowing can have certain undesirable elements for a poor country, like Zambia, especially if the borrowed resources get applied to sectors of the economy that do not maximize the return on their investment. The ideal case would be to try and live within the means and optimize use of available resources for road infrastructure. But borrowing, nonetheless, would be permitted to the extent that it does no harm to the country’s economy or its people, current and future, i.e. borrowing sustainably.

In Zambia’s context, these principles were enshrined in the RoadSIP II Bankable Document of 2002. It was agreed from the onset that the cooperating partners would provide US$1.62 billion over a period of ten years in order to supplement local revenues generated from fuel levy and road taxes/vehicle licenses, wholly channeled to a dedicated road fund and earmarked for routine and periodic maintenance. The government, on the other part, was to mobilize its resources, from the fiscus, for the rehabilitation and clearance of backlog maintenance in the road network.

These tenets were well within the country’s Transport Policy, which is very emphatic on mobilization of road sector resources. It states :

All funding to the road and transport sector whether from Government, donors, road user charges or private sector investment … shall be channeled through the National Road Fund [Agency]. This will enable effective coordination of the road and road transport programs and investment… The [National] Road Fund Agency shall commercialize its functions. (p. 42)

In fact, the Transport Policy document did not consider that the treasury would fund the administrative costs of the Road Development Agency (RDA), National Road Fund Agency (NRFA), and Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) as these Agencies were expected to be self-financing through the National Road Fund Agency (NRFA) provided that the road user charges were channeled directly to the fund (p. 44). On the contrary, no funds are channeled directly to the NRFA since all government revenues are mandated to pass through Control 99 account at the Ministry of Finance. Suffice it to say that evidence is available to show that “… over the last seven (7) years, over 74% of the total annual budgets for the Local Road Fund from 2006 to 2012 has been released.”^[37] The level of disbursements made to the NRFA by the Ministry of Finance shows how credible government has been to its commitments in road sector financing. Resulting from the channeling of all road sector resources through the Ministry of Finance, the treasury is mandated to providing an operational grant to RDA, NRFA, and RTSA as a proportion of the Road Fund on local resources, limited to ten (10) percent.

It was also the anticipation of the Transport Policy document that the National Road Fund Agency would be able to attract foreign direct investment through concessioning of roads, tolling of roads and introduction of other forms of direct investment like Build, Operate, and Transfer (BOT), and that this integrated funding would enable cost effective maintenance of road network and promote national development through a balanced development of all types of roads (p. 43). Well, the past decade of the transport has not seen the concession of roads, but it has, at least, seen the introduction of road tolling effective November 1, 2013. The low traffic volume in the country may have played a role in the deferment of road tolling, but persistent maintenance funding deficits have seen the expedited implementation of road tolling.

Statutory Instrument SI No. 73 of 2013 which introduced road tolling was a serious strategic shift in road sector resource mobilization. The impact of road tolling on road asset management is one we shall only be able to evaluate in the next have decade, but lessons learnt elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa on pilferage, high operational costs in proportion to the tolling revenues, break-even traffic levels, can be reminisced as the nation forges ahead with the tolling programs. It is fine to start tolling in rudimentary Zimbabwean style if all the authorities in Zambia want to see is direct revenues into the treasury, but it is startling to see Zimbabwe quickly learn from its mistakes, and beginning to award concession road contracts. The Property24 announced April 15, 2013 that:

Group Five has announced the formal launch of the Infralink road construction contract and the opening of the Ntabazinduna Toll Plaza in Zimbabwe. The official launch of the US$206 million… construction contract… Group Five implemented its own innovative systems and tolling solutions on the contract while ensuring substantive local Zimbabwe participation in the execution of the work… The road contract forms part of the … 822 kilometers east to west route in Zimbabwe… The development loan for the contract was provided by the Development Bank of Southern Africa… To implement the road upgrading contract, a joint venture company between the Zimbabwe National Road Administration and Group Five was formed, called Infralink…^[38]

Zambia’s propensity to advance road asset management will rely heavily on the nation’s capability to employ proven strategies, which have been tried and tested elsewhere in the sub-region, and proven to be best practices, instead of re-inventing the wheels and wanting to prove every strategy herself. Zimbabwe has already learnt that the government agencies were not best placed to collect and administer road tolls, and has made a quick decision to abandon government-manned toll booths. On the contrary, Zambia sees no immediate need to concession the roads, but rather finds comfort in using the road agency to collect the road tolls.

The actualization of the Tolls Act No. 14 of 2011 came, of course, against the backdrop of a huge infrastructure funding gap identified in the 2014 national budget. The Daily Nation reported that “The Zambian government has agreed on a number of tax measures including road tolling in order to cover for the deficit next year. Among the plans is the broadening of tax base of capturing revenue from some non-traditional sources...”^[39] The statement was fully supported by Hon. Yamfwa Mukanga, Minister for Transport, Communications, Works, and Supply, who observed that government’s road direct expenditure on maintenance programs had shot up by 30 percent over the last four years. Further, the Minister bemoaned that:

[The cost] now stood at 75% from between 45% and 57% in 2009, with cooperating partners being the major financing sources. He said given this trend, it had become prudent for government to plan for future Routine Road Maintenance (RRM) programs through the introduction of innovative and sustainable self-financing methods. Government … had recognized the need for establishing broad and sustainable financing base for future implementation of effective RRM programs by enacting CAP 465, which was meant to effectively implement road tolling in Zambia…”^[40]

It is gratifying to note that the Road Development Agency (RDA), working in conjunction with the Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) began the collection of road tolls, first from international transit traffic at border points and all the heavy duty traffic that passes through the weigh-bridges. However, it is essential to acknowledge the efforts of the public-private partnership (PPP) Act No. 14 of 2009, which had aimed at introducing private sector driven Build, Operate, and Transfer (BOT) road programs in which the concessionaire would recover their investment through the direct collection of tolls. The passing of the PPP Act had enabled the PPP Unit, operating under the Ministry of Finance, to commence the invitation for pre-qualification proposals of firms to undertake BOT projects on several roads ranging from 100km to 550km packages. The advertisements first appeared in the media in November 2009 targeting over 3,000km to be launched in 2010.^[41] This process was halted by the PPP Unit at the tender evaluation stage in preference of a National Road Tolling Program to be managed by RDA.

Following the moderation of reciprocal and proposed local tariffs and subsequent signing of SI No. 73, RDA estimates annual toll revenues to reach about ZMW 275 million^[42] (or USD 50 million)^[43] per annum. Whether the future increases in tolling revenues due to increased capture of local traffic would be sufficient to cover the full cost of routine and periodic maintenance is yet to be ascertained, much as public discontent at failure by the road agencies to provide the citizens with a well-maintained road asset should the tolls prove inadequate for the intended programs.

Ironically, the operation of toll-collection points, or toll plazas, comes with the need for the RDA to provide operational and maintenance funds, which in view of the low traffic levels on Zambia’s roads would challenge the purpose of tolling itself; bearing in mind that the most trafficked road in Zambia, the Kitwe – Chingola road only carries about 7,790 veh/day^[44] in both directions, with far less traffic on the rest of the road network. The Aurecon Study Report^[45] into the feasibility of tolling in Zambia made the following two major conclusions:

- Clause 10.1.2: Opinion Survey and Attitude Assessment:
- The most important findings were that only 10% of the respondents are of the opinion that the road network is in good condition and 85% are willing to pay for tolls.
- road users are willing to pay at least USD 0.025 per km for tolls but not more than USD0.030 per km (for class 1 vehicles). These rates are the expected affordable levels for tolling in Zambia.
- Clause 10.1.3: Conventional Tolling:
- financial analyses of conventional tolling for the two scenarios confirms the broad rule of thumb that about 15,000 veh/day is required for conventional concession to cover full cost, 6,500 veh/day to cover rehabilitation, operation and maintenance costs, and 3,500 veh/day to cover operation and maintenance costs only. This is based on an assumption of 20-year cost recovery period and an affordable toll rate between USD 0.03 to USD 0.06 per vehicle-km.

The report finally recommended that the tolling model for Zambia should be based on incorporating a National Toll Road Company (NTRC), or Special Purpose vehicle (SPV). This model is similar to the one which Zimbabwe has recently implemented, but which Zambia has set aside in preference of the Road Development Agency collecting the toll fees. The Aurecon Report, however, was quick to advise that more detailed investigations were required to determine the institutional and human resource requirements of the NTRC, the relevant legal aspects and the specific contractual requirements of the various contracts that would be required (p. 170 – 172). This was in view of the fact that outside of the North-South Corridor; the majority of the road network in Zambia carries far less than a thousand vehicles per day in both directions (p. 64).

Given the economic climate in the country, and considering whether the RDA, itself, was happy enough to incur additional operational and maintenance costs for operating toll plazas, or had the opportunity to consider permitting alternative government instruments to raise the same amount of money as would be realized from tolling, has been a matter of debate. In a Policy Brief on SI No. 73, the Zambia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ZACCI) highlighted one side to the debate:

A counter view received is that Road related government revenue, globally, is gained at five points (i) Licensing, (ii) Element in fuel Price, (iii) Road Tax, (iv) Carbon Tax and (v) Toll fees. They say that the approach of taxing each element independently is more transparent and favored globally. As such, embedding the same in the national fuel pricing structure or in any other tax regime will not take away the need to develop new roads and maintain those already in place.^[46]

As the toll revenues would have to be channeled through Control 99, it would be difficult to ring-fence revenues for maintenance of the road on which the tolls were collected. This is especially the challenge for a National Toll Road Program which is aimed at subsidizing even the less trafficked roads for maintenance requirements. ZACCI also looked at the possibility of raising the tariff level for the fuel levy as it also cuts across all road users in the country, but precedent does not favor this option as there has never been tariff hikes on the fuel levy since inception.

It is critical to try and emphasize the weakness of public infrastructure funding as seen in the United States. The Transportation Research Board (2008; 5) observed that:

Present finance arrangements are inadequate for maintaining and improving freight transportation system performance. The future reliability of the present major sources of public funding is uncertain. Of equal importance, public-sector finance arrangements are often not designed to provide incentives for efficient development and operation of transportation facilities. ^[47]

It is perhaps justified at this point to recollect some interesting historical events that have taken place in the realm of resource mobilization and road asset management systems in Zambia. RoadSIP II Bankable Document (2003)^[48] observed that although Zambia had been reported to have had one of the best highway networks in 1970s in Sub-Saharan Africa, funds available for rehabilitation and maintenance of Trunk, Main, and District (TMD) roads had declined in real terms over a long period of time, although the Core Road Network had increased substantially. Since the early 1980s, government through its annual budgets had contributed on average, approximately 30-35% towards road improvement. According to the RoadSIP II Bankable Document, this scenario was not expected to improve in the coming years, unless other measures to increase funding were implemented.

Further, it was observed that the Road Fund, introduced in 1994 by a Statutory Instrument, had been the steady source of funding for road activities. Although it had been meant for routine and periodic maintenance, it had been diverted to cover the cost of rehabilitation, intrinsically, at the expense of maintenance. It was argued that although the Road Fund was initially meant to supplement recurrent funding from the fiscus, its role was being reversed and that it would in the future, based on the new Transport Policy, be the only source of income. Until then, it had been estimated that by 1991, 80% of the road network had deteriorated and that out of a total road asset valued at estimated US$2.3 billion, US$400 million had been lost due to neglected maintenance.

Gananadha (2001)^[49] also noted that by 1987 only about 40% of the primary road network in Zambia was in good condition. He expressed concern that Zambia had, during the preceding 30 years, been living off its assets of road infrastructure. His conclusion was that an approximated US$38 million would be required annually to avoid further loss. Meanwhile, Heggie (1999)^[50] attributed this erosion of the road asset to the country’s emphasis on opening new areas of communication and economic development through construction of new roads in both government and donor-funded road projects. “As a result, little attention was paid to establishing a mechanism of ensuring sustainable maintenance of newly constructed roads or indeed, of the established road network,” he concluded.

The historical perspective clearly demonstrates years of disinvestment in road maintenance programs, and the subsequent erosion of the road asset value. The pre-RoadSIP era really lacked the much needed balance between maintenance and new construction, and it is even more evident that a mismatch of resources and needs existed in the fabric of the entire road planning systems. Lessons were learned, and the RoadSIP was born, bringing along so much hope to a road network that was down on its knees. Whatever happens, effective and efficient road asset management demands a categorical balance between maintenance and new construction. The delicacy of maintaining such a balance is shown in Fig.2 below.

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Figure 2: Balancing Maintenance and Capital Investments

Apparently, the global economic standing of Zambia always tries to make it difficult for the nation to mobilize sufficient resources to cover payments for the contracted works. The situation can only be anticipated to worsen in the light of the unprecedented volume of roads contracts earmarked under Link Zambia 8000, Urban Road Rehabilitation Project, etc. This has been evident in the published stories concerning non-payment, or delayed payment, of contractors’ claims. For instance, the Times of Zambia^[51] reported that works on the 90-km Isoka – Muyombe Road in Muchinga Province had stalled following delays to pay China Jiangxi more than US$ 3 million and, as such, 200 workers employed by the Chinese contractor had recently protested against non-payment of their salaries. However, the story was refuted by the RDA chief executive officer in the same article. Similar reports were also published on the Chipata – Chadiza Road construction project in Eastern Province. The Post Online ^[52] published on December 5, 2013, reported the following story:

Chief Zingalume pleads for payment of road contractors.

Chief Zingalume of the Chewa people in Chadiza has appealed to the government to pay the road contractor working on Chadiza roads to expedite works... “These people are working on roads but sometimes the only problem is that government is sometimes slow in paying them... if everything is in place, we can finish the road within the stipulated time of 30 months. The challenge here is the delayed payment by government... the design and the consultant is not there,” he said.

There is no smoke without fire, it is normally said; but if the situation persisted to the level that the contractors would opt to suspend works, project costs would soar due to interest claimed on delayed payment as well as suspension costs which contractors would eventually claim. It can be agonizing to be the state and the contractors if a negative cash-flow were maintained on the projects. While project costs could continue to soar, the benefits to society would also continue to be delayed, thereby making all players to lose out.

There are many lessons that can be learnt from experiences around the world. As an example, we shall take the case of Ghana, in which road-works were over-procured during the presidential elections. Text Box 3 carries the case study and the lessons learnt when procurement of road contracts exceeds the available resources in the medium-term expenditure framework.

Text Box 3: Case Study on Challenges of Delayed Payments in Ghana

Road Contractors blame Kufuor over delayed payments

January 12, 2010 , Myjoyonline.com/Ghana reported:

Road contractors blame Kufuor over delayed payments.

Ghanaian road contractors say funds released for payment of debts owed by government is not enough. The Finance Minister announced on Monday the release of GH¢160 million for the payment of debts owed several contractors.

But the Road Contractors’ Association says majority of its members would still be reeling under the pressure of delayed payments for work done. The contractors blame their predicament on the Kufuor administration which they say awarded too many contracts it couldn’t pay for. Vice president of the association, Joseph Ebow Hewton, said the shock of the delayed payments has made some of its members sick with others passing on.

“This problem is going to be with us for a long time unless government comes in to do something about it,” Mr. Hewton said. The Road Fund received GH¢87.5 million last year but the road contractors accuse government of awarding contracts to the tune of GH¢6 trillion.

The Road Fund is expected to receive GH¢145.2 million, with GH¢5.2 million to be transferred into the Petroleum-related Fund for the funding of exploration and other petroleum-related activities.

Meanwhile the Director of Budget at the Finance Ministry, Simon Kyei, says many of the local contractors would be covered in the latest payment. “If you look at the list of beneficiaries, you will see that the local road contractors…constitute about 80 to 90 per cent. The foreign contractors are very few,” he said.

Lessons learnt:

I. The over-commitment cited here occurred in the election year. Kufuor was Ghana’s out-going President at the time. Therefore, procurement of road contracts is very much a political issue.
II. Failure to honor payments on time leads to socio-economic problems in the country. The government pays more in penalties, while firms are driven out of business. Employees lose employment and families break up.

Source: http://news.myjoyonline.com/business/201001/40452.asp. Published January 12, 2010. Accessed January 20, 2010

Most importantly, it is worth noting that Zambia’s road sector also went through a period of over-commitment as highlighted in 2010 Office of the Auditor General’s Report. According The Post Online^[53] published August 21, 2010:

The parliamentary public accounts committee (PAC) has observed that the Road Development Agency (RDA) board of directors has not been performing all its functions as specified in the National Roads Act of 2002… According to the PAC third report of the Auditor General on RDA committee also observed that there was no coordination between RDA and the National Road Fund Agency (NRFA)… In the Auditor General’s report of January 2006 to September 2009, it was revealed that RDA overcommitted government to a tune of K1.1 trillion [un-rebased, but estimated at US$220m] through various contracts.

It was further observed that “Coordination, cooperation and linkages between RDA and NRFA are very poor despite the existence of the Committee of Ministers, Committee of chairpersons of the three road Agencies…”

Earlier appearing before the PAC, RDA director had told the Committee that the agency faced problems with funding, saying “the allocation towards the construction of roads and bridges in the country required more money”, which he said had hindered the agency from completing the works on most roads^[54].

Evidently, the cycle of teething problems in resource mobilization as witnessed in the Ghanaian and Zambian models should be taken into account when planning means and ways of effectively and efficiently managing the nation’s road asset.

3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

Firstly, we must understand the very basis of research, in that: “All research is based on assumptions about how the world is perceived and how we can best come to understand it” (Trochim, 2002)^[55]. The complexity of research methods and methodologies, and their related research work demand continuous review of literature for newer efficient and effective ways of conducting research on the part of the researcher. As such, the best practice is for the researcher to include in their research paper the methods and methodologies which they have used.

Analyzing the complexity of research methodology development, Knight & Cross (2012) observed that:

Developing a research methodology for a research project is a complex process … replete with a mine-field of choices for the researcher. The complex, often emotive, and at times seemingly contradictory vocabulary, even of established theory, methods, and applications of methods can often serve to further complicate this process, particularly for the early career researcher. ^[56]

The inter-woven nature of the research process can often be cited as the main reason many people distance themselves for rigorous and analytic work. Further, Jonker et al. (2010) have argued that: “Methodology is the field which is indisputably complex. In the academic world, it is often said to be important, yet in everyday academic practice, it is not always treated accordingly.”^[57]

In respect of the above analysis, I have taken cognizance of the impending hurdles which I will definitely encounter in the process of my own research. As such, I will rely heavily on the work which I developed in completing my assignment on Transportation Research Methodology, while building on with the new knowledge which will come my way as I develop my dissertation.

3.2 Theoretical Background

The research work started with a detailed desk study of the available numerous studies in the Zambian road sector as a way of extending my knowledge about the field of research. the primary focus was to integrate the knowledge available on Zambia’s road sector at local level as well as at the regional and global levels. This exceptional use of secondary data sources was motivated by the belief that adequate reliable and validated data was readily available on the subject matter. The research topic was discussed with some industry expert who also volunteered to give their opinion. These individual interviews with selected industry experts helped the author to develop a framework of questions which was later used for survey questionnaire. In this report, both statistical and generalized empirical findings are reported.

In his lecture notes, Clarke (2005)^[58] defines research as “going beyond personal experience, thoughts, feelings, and opinions that do not refer to other sources of information,” while stressing that some subjects require us to go beyond our personal knowledge and experience (p.4). He provides the following reasons why research could be undertaken:

- Exploring an idea,
- Probing an issue,
- Solving a problem,
- Making an argument that compels us to turn to outside help.

He argues that a clear thought process is important “because it is extremely difficult to do without scaffolding or structuring ones thoughts” and that “if thoughts cannot be communicated then you do not truly understand them.” (p. 5) Further, Clarke defines primary research as the study of a subject through first hand observation and investigation, while secondary research involves the examination of the studies of other researchers. He notes that primary sources of information include statistical data, historical data, works, or art, etc., while secondary sources include books, articles about political issues, medical issues, scientific debates or literary works. It is, however, his conclusion that “Most research and research writing involves the use of both forms of research and both forms of research sources.” (p. 7).

Clarke’s focus on research modeling follows after the works of Creswell (2003) which concluded that there were broadly two major research paradigms: quantitative and qualitative. He notes that quantitative research model is also known as “traditional, positivist, experimental, or empiricist as advanced by authorities such as Comte, Mill, Durkheim, Newton, [and] Locke”, while qualitative research is known as “constructivist, naturalistic, interpretive, postpositivist or postmodern perspective as advanced by Dithey, Kant, Wittgenstein (latter), Foucault, Miles and Huberman.” (p. 9).

Reasons for choice of use of a given paradigm vary from researcher to researcher, but in Clarke’s view, the following are the major reasons:

- Worldview or assumptions of each paradigm,
- Training and experience,
- Psychological attributes,
- Nature of the problem, and
- Audience of the study.

Clarke places emphasis on the aspect of reality, noting that models normally indentify basic concepts and describe what reality is like, and the conditions by which we can study it, before reaching his conclusion that models must therefore be used to describe the overall framework used to arrive at a reality, based on philosophical stance. He further simplifies the terminology of research models which he said could also be called “research paradigms” or “research philosophy”.

In furtherance of his discussion on research models, Clarke takes an opportunity to discuss the essence of “concepts” in a bit more detail. He defines a concept as a general expression of particular phenomenon and that concepts are used to impose some sort of coherent meaning on the world. This means that it is only through concepts that we can make sense of reality, and perceive order and coherence. “Our perception of our surrounding is therefore highly dependent on the scale of our knowledge and our familiarity with a wide range of concepts,” argues Clarke (pp 14-16). Furthermore, Clarke notes the difficulties of precise concept definition in social scientists as their models may be based on opinions, values, traditions, cultures, and rules that cannot be precisely ‘pinned down’, as contrasted with natural science where concepts can be defined with great precision, which he said could be possible to do in research.

Meanwhile, Knight & Cross (2012; 41) suggest that it is useful to see the process of scientific inquiry as a journey through four evolving phases, which include the following:

1) Conceptual;
2) Philosophical;
3) Implementation; and
4) Evaluation.

They depict these phenomena through their Conceptual Constructs Model (CCM) shown below in Figure 3.

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Figure 3: The Conceptual Constructs Model

As a way of stressing the important role that the researcher plays in the conceptual constructs model (CCM), Knight & Cross observed that: “within the CCM, the factors that relate to the researcher as a ‘self-driven’ cognitive entity in their own right and their influence on the research project’s ‘point-of-view’ are what … [is] described as the researcher’s developing “theoretical lens” … and … “skills”.” [This is] because a researcher’s own individual mind-set, bias, skills, and knowledge become an intrinsic part of the research process. Moreover, the act of the research investigation itself has the capacity to affect what is being researched, which, in turn, has the capacity to influence perceptions of the phenomena and therefore interpretation of results.”^[59]

Their final contention was that “It stands to reason then, and is presupposed by the CCM, that no researcher would expect to be in the same cognitive-space at the end of a research project as at the beginning.” (p. 44). Apparently, the researcher’s active participation has the capability to transform or reform the researcher’s mid set.

Reverting to Clarke on the subject of research paradigms, we note his general advice that it would be best to select a single paradigm (quantitative or qualitative) for research work, rather than adopt multi-method research. His justification is based, largely, on the fact that qualitative and quantitative research is based on differences in:

- Nature of reality – ontology,
- Relationship to that being researched – epistemology,
- Role of values – axiology,
- Use of language/words – rhetorical, and
- Overall process of research – methodological.

He also sees pragmatic choices made based on: time, skills, and overall size of the project in the selection of single versus multi-method research, without ruling out theoretical the pluralistic strategy using multiple theories which may appear to be simpler than improving the basis of a theory. He further notes that the pluralistic strategy is commonly used although it’s fraught with danger, even to the extent of easily misleading ourselves into thinking that several theories are compatible just because we can apply them. (p. 31).

To guide the researcher, Clarke notes that different kinds of research questions require different types of approaches, and that various methodologies have emerged to deal with them. He draws the researcher to examples shown in Table 4 below (p.36) as a general guide to development of research methodologies:

Table 4:Examples of Research Methodologies

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There are, however, a number of interesting questions which Clarke (pp. 50 – 52) raises regarding the precise choice of methodology, methodology combination, and the worth of research questions. In the end, he finds it prudent to provide the researcher with the following general guidance:

- To know which research methodology to choose, one should consult superiors who have worked directly in the application domain that one is interested in studying. One must also look at significant papers in one’s field and attempt to determine what methodology was used.
- On the mixing of research methodology, in principle, one need not to. But if one can demonstrate the need to do multi-methodology research and establish the condition for doing it, then that would likely form a substantial part of originality for the PhD dissertation.
- On how one would know whether the question is worth researching, Clarke notes the following:
- You won’t necessarily, but others are likely to.
- Beware that your research will change and evolve – in my opinion let it! … The problem will get more complex as your reading and research increases. Early on if it doesn’t get complex then it may be that the problem is not really appropriate.
- If your problem appears to be getting more complex then that’s often a good sign – your work is substantial.

In general, that there are predictable sets of questions, issues, and information that one needs to address in order to successfully undertake a research (Clarke, 2005; 54 – 57). These predictable elements differ depending on whether a qualitative or quantitative study is being undertaken. Clarke observes that these research design formats bridge the gap between one’s research proposal and their evolving dissertation, before he adds that one would probably need to do both types of design formats if one wishes to undertake multi-paradigm research, although this is the reason why multi-method researches take more time.

However, philosophical assumptions can drive epistemological framework of research and hence facilitate the whole research approach, purpose, and methodologies (Knight & Cross, 2012; 45). This is illustrated in Fig. 4 below, while a graphical depiction of the Conceptual Constructs Model (CCM) is shown in Fig. 5.

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Figure 4: The Influence of Philosophical Assumptions on Research Process & Tasks

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Figure 5: A Holistic (Cyclical) Approach to Research Tasks, driven by the CCM

Further reference to Clarke’s works shows the recognition that there are certainly occasions when combining methods and methodologies can be useful, a process which is generally referred to as ‘ triangulation ’. He cites simultaneous triangulation as one in which the researcher answers qualitative and quantitative questions at the same time, but in which results of the qualitative questions are reported separately and would not necessarily relate to or confirm the results of the quantitative study. He calls for well-founded justification if one has to use multi-method research approach. This gives an opportunity to the researchers to validate results of their findings

On the other hand, Knight & Cross, also touch on the concept of multi-level investigation, whose complexity requires the adoption and fusion of multiple methodological strategies to accomplish the research. Their concept is best depicted in Figure 5 above. Giving an example about the task of literature review, they note that:

The task of literature review is a case in point. Usually coming at the beginning of a research project to establish the researcher’s developing knowledge of the research object and context. As the researcher cognitively engages associated academic theory, a foundation is laid for the first constructions of any theory and research questions. These in turn further influence multiple directions of subsequent literature review, which may become broader or more narrow in scope... Finally, previous literature can be engaged again in relation to findings of the research. It should be noted that iteratively revisiting literature is indicated in numerous heuristic research models.^[60]

Epistemological pluralism is not a rarity in itself: “all quantitative data is based upon qualitative judgments; and all qualitative data can be described and manipulated numerically”, (Trochim, 2002), a notion Knight & Cross (p. 46) say suggests quantitative/deductive and qualitative/inductive research approaches as being merely two sides of the same coin. This concept, they noted, was embraced philosophically by pluralism and methodologically by triangulation, which, essentially, meant the act of combining various methodologies from both positivist and interpretivist epistemologies as advocated by researchers who believe that deductive and inductive research are not necessarily opposed but, rather, could be used to focus on different dimensions of the same phenomenon.

DATA: Collection, Analysis, and Validation

Having adequately covered the review of literature on research paradigms, concepts and methodologies, it is important to extend our literature review to data collection methods, data analysis, and validation as well as study design.

Typically research is undertaken using interviews, questionnaires, observations, and or experiments. A key element of any research is data collection. There are many ways to get information . The most common research methods are: literature searches, talking with people, focus groups, personal interviews, telephone surveys, mail surveys, email surveys, and internet surveys.^[61] It is recommended that during the conduct of research, one should use a sample of the population, rather than the entire population, for the obvious reasons of cost, ease of analysis, etc.

The Higher National Diploma in Management, Management Research: Candidate Support Pack, observes that: “Primary data can be expensive and time consuming, so begin your research with secondary data; only when you have exhausted those sources should you initiate primary data collection.”^[62] Internal sources of secondary data are also identified as listing invoices, report from different departments, warranties, complaints, brochures and catalogues, while external sources are identified to be published sources (books and articles, general statistics, industry statistics, statistical bureau, annual accounts, and research reports) and commercial sources (panel research, scanner research, monitors, in-shop research and reports) (p. 74). On page 76, the book places emphasis on creation of data sets from secondary sources as “secondary data, by its nature, is not necessarily wholly relevant to your research question/objectives,” arguing that data sets could be created from historical databases, company archives, etc.

Newbold et al. (2013; 26)^[63] expound the concept of qualitative and quantitative data, adding that with qualitative data there is no measurable meaning to the “difference” in numbers, whereas with quantitative data there is a measurable meaning to the difference in numbers. They argue, further, that qualitative data include nominal and ordinal^[64] levels of measurement, whereas quantitative data include interval and ratio measurement. There is clearly a difference in which the two types of data can be mathematically or statistically manipulated in order for them to give meaningful results.

In the conceptual constructs model (CCM), data analysis is based on an intuitive approach to observing, analyzing, and comparing research data (Knight & Cross 2012; 52-53). Researcher intuition, as a means for developing the logic of an investigation, has been most often associated with triangulated research strategies, but is also deeply rooted in the ‘thought experiment’ posing of hypothetical questions, argues Knight & Cross, before noting a second characteristic of data analysis in the CCM which points to the fact that the ‘data’ to be examined are not pre-supposed to be only the user-results but can be conceptualized from previous theory, observations from other sources, analysis notes, and the combining of data-sets into new constructed categories.

It appears, and indeed it should be the case, that data should be treated cautiously during the process of collection, selection and eventual analysis, whether it is qualitative or quantitative data. Heuristic methods utilized in constructivist Grounded Theory may arguably be simple and often logical, thereby permitting contentions that data could gradually transform itself into results as the analysis takes place throughout the research process. In addition, and contrary to what might be expected, this type of approach can be applied to both quantitative and qualitative data, in that Constructs of Investigation (CoI’s) and Units of Analysis (UoA’s) can be conceptualized at any stage of the research process, the analysis of which can be about testing or building theory, or both. (p.95)

Nonetheless, the general observation made by the Higher National Diploma in Management, Management Research (2009; 73) was that usage of primary data, notwithstanding, held the following disadvantages (p. 71):

- it can be much more expensive to collect,
- it can take more time,
- it can be difficult to get access to, or find customers or companies who are willing to answer questions,
- it is very important to use proper tools, procedures and methods of analysis,
- the researcher has less control as other factors may influence the data collection.

The University of Texas notes that emphasis on validation primarily relates to mathematical models of physical phenomena, which is said to be critical to developing reliable predictive simulations. However, robust and reliable validation processes are not well established.

We refer here to a “validation cycle” in recognition of the fact that validation is iterative, with results of a validation exercise commonly leading to refinement of either the model or its calibration. The validation process is made more subtle and complicated by the need to account for uncertainty and the fact that one generally needs to validate the model’s ability to predict particular quantities of interest…, and these quantities are usually not accessible experimentally. Among the research and development issues being pursued in the development of validation methods are:

- Procedures for determining surrogate quantities of interest,
- Acceptance measures and criterion,
- Selection of tolerances for decision making,
- Parameter identification by Bayesian methods,
- Procedures for selecting relevant observables,
- Adaptive validation methods, and
- Validation of data reduction models in laboratory experiments.^[65]

However, a brief summary on data management aspects is provided by Knight & Cross provide who observed that: “there is an abundance of data collection, collation, analysis, methods, and strategies available to researchers. Some suit specific philosophical approaches better than others, but many can be used, albeit in different ways, with any research purpose. Moreover, some approaches allow, or even require, multiple methodologies to be applied” (pp. 47- 48). Such a wholesome statement gives hope to the new researcher and provides scope in which detailed literature review could find efficient means of manipulating data.

Hypothesis

An important aspect of literature review in the context of this study involves a discussion on the concept of “hypothesis”. According to Kim Ann Zimmerman’s post on livescience ^[66] , made on July 10, 2012, a scientific hypothesis is an initial building block in the scientific method, generally called an “educated guess”, based on prior knowledge and observation as to the cause of a particular phenomenon. He adds, further, that it is a suggested solution for an unexplained occurrence that does not fit into current accepted scientific theory, but one for which there is no pre-determined outcome. Experiments are essential to see whether they support the predictions, and that “upon analysis of results, a hypothesis can be rejected or modified, but it can never be proven to be correct 100 percent of the time,” he concluded.

Another definition of a hypothesis given is that it is “a tentative statement about the relationship between two or more variables.”^[67] Giving an example such as : “This study is designed to assess the hypothesis that sleep deprived people will perform worse on a test than individuals who are not sleep deprived.” It is advised for the researcher to establish whether the hypothesis includes independent and dependent variables before coming up with a specific hypothesis.

In statistical hypothesis testing concepts, according to Wikipedia^[68], when a possible correlation or similar relation between phenomena is investigated, the hypothesis that a relationship exists cannot be examined the same way one might examine a proposed new law of nature. Statistical tests are used to determine how likely it is that the overall effect would be observed if no real relationship as hypothesized existed. It is advisable to note that in statistical hypothesis testing, two hypotheses are tested, which are called the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis. Accordingly,

The null hypothesis is the hypothesis that states that there is no relation between the phenomena whose relation is under investigation, or at least not of the form given by the alternative hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis is the hypothesis which states that there’s some kind of relation. It is a requirement that significant levels for testing the hypothesis are fixed in advance as well as the sample size.

Questionnaire development

A full background has been given on data management processes, but is also of essence that aspects of questionnaire development for use in collecting primary data are also discussed. The Candidate Support Pack: Higher National Diploma in Management, Management Research, gives a comprehensive treatment of questionnaire design and effective means of administering it (pp. 61-67), urging the candidate to seriously consider what key questions need to be answered for the research, and by which respondents. While acknowledging the poor response rate to questionnaires, the book recommends the following techniques to improving the response rate (p. 63):

- brevity — survey on a single page if possible,
- financial incentives, either in advance or on completion,
- free gifts, for example pens (a favorite of charitable groups); entry into a lottery, draw or contest; discount coupons,
- contacting respondents in advance to ask,
- sending multiple requests (may cause annoyance)
- mention affiliation with universities, research institutions, or charities
- guarantee anonymity.^[69]

A further recommendation is strongly suggested for the use of closed question types for the following advantages (p. 64):

- speed – interviewers can record the answers and respondents can answer closed questions more quickly,
- accuracy – interviewers or respondents are less likely to record inappropriate answers,
- data entry – responses are easier to convert into numbers (i.e. how many of each possible response) for analysis.

A key disadvantage of the open questions noted by the authors was that they allow respondents too much latitude to answer with anything they want. This is unlikely to give orderly data which can easily be mathematically manipulated. Simplicity, clarity, brevity, and neutrality are the four main pillars identified in the successful structuring of the questionnaire (p. 65).

Upon the receipt of questionnaire responses, an analysis has to be undertaken. Mostly, the Likert Scale is used if it was the basis on which the questionnaire was framed. The analysis of the Likert (ordinal) scale is a simple computation of the means, or measures of central tendency, using Microsoft Excel software (Okert, 2005; 55). Tastle et al. (2005; 2)^[70] observed that the number of choices that may be selected as categories of a Likert scale are virtually without limit, although the five or seven category scales are the most prominent. He argued, further, that with an increase in the number of categories, the accuracy of the category selected becomes crisper. However, his conclusion was that regardless of the granularity of the categories, ordinal scales were merely ordered and that the distance between each category, sometimes referred to as the interval, was incorrectly assumed to be equal.

In his further analysis, Tastle et al. avers that the dispersion of values about a central value, i.e., the weighted mean, permits an assessment of the strength of the collective respondents’ perceptions without placing a focus on an arbitrary numerical interval assignment, arguing that a collective set of ordinal scale values that yield a narrow dispersion could logically be viewed as possessing a greater agreement than one with a wide dispersion (p. 3). Notwithstanding, he concluded that: “Utilizing the Likert scale has been a continuing problem when seeking ways in which to tabulate and compare the values of ordinal scales.” (p. 6).

Bertram (2008; 1) joins the debate on Likert scales and provides the following definition of the Likert scale:

A psychometric response scale primarily used in questionnaires to obtain participant’s preferences or degree of agreement with a statement or set of statements. Likert scales are a non-comparative scaling technique and are unidimensional (only measure a single trait) in nature. Respondents are asked to indicate their level of agreement with a given statement by way of an ordinal scale.^[71]

He further observes that each level on the scale is assigned a numeric value or coding, usually starting at 1 and incremented by one for each level. Bertram provides the sample scale shown in Table 5, below, which is used in Likert scale questions. He notes, further, that while some practitioners advocated the use of 7 and 9-point scales, sometimes, a 4-point, or other even numbered scale was used to produce an ‘ipsative’^[72] measure where no indifferent option is available. His view was that each specific question (or “item”) can have its response analyzed separately, or have it summed with other related items to create a score for a group of statements, the reason also why Likert scales are sometimes called summative scales.

Table 5: Sample of Likert Scale

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In his analysis, Bertram recommends three methods of analysis depending on how the Likert scale questions have been treated (p. 4):

a) Analysis methods used for individual questions (ordinal data):

- bar charts and dot plots: not histograms (data is not continuous)

- central tendency summarized by median and mode: not mean

- variability summarized by range and inter ‐ quartile range: not standard deviation

- analyzed using non ‐ parametric tests (differences between the medians of comparable groups)

- Mann ‐ Whitney U test (see below)
- Wilcoxon signed ‐ rank test
- Kruskal ‐ Wallis test

b) When multiple Likert question responses are summed together (interval data):

- all questions must use the same Likert scale,
- must be a defendable approximation to an interval scale (i.e. coding indicates magnitude of difference between items, but there is no absolute zero point)
- all items measure a single latent variable (i.e. a variable that is not directly observed, but rather inferred from other variables that are observed and directly measured)
- analyzed using parametric tests
- analysis of variance (ANOVA)

c) Analysis methods used when reduced to nominal levels of agree vs. disagree:

- Chi - square test
- Cochran Q test
- McNemar test

3.3 Presentation of the Methodology

Having given a comprehensive theoretical background to the methodology in the previous section, it is of great necessity to present the specific methodologies used in this research as well as their justification.

First and foremost, it is necessary to explain methods used for data collection used in this research, features of the population, accuracy, and reliability of data. Secondly, it is also important to explain the actual methodology for data analysis. Statistical methods, software, or the formulas used in data analysis, and qualitative analytical tools and techniques used, if any, to enable readers to critic the reliability, validity, and generalization of research results. This is presented in the sections that follow below.

The research work started with a detailed desk study of the available numerous studies in the Zambian road sector as well as at the regional and global levels, focusing on both numerical and normative findings. This exceptional use of secondary data sources was motivated by the fact that adequate reliable and validated data was readily available on the subject matter. Individual interviews with selected industry experts in the Zambian road sector were also conducted. A survey was conducted using Likert scale questionnaire. In this report, both statistical and generalized empirical findings are reported.

The work of Newbold et al. (2013)^[73] as contained in their book entitled: “Statistics for Business and Economics”, was exceptionally helpful in the whole analysis in this study.

3.3.1 Choice of Variables

The study is broad-based, but the necessity for keeping measurable variables to the desirable minimum was recognized from the onset. The main variables identified in this study relate to road distance measurement in terms of kilometers, international roughness index (IRI) in terms of millimeters per kilometer (mm/km), budgetary allocations and disbursements in terms of Zambian Kwacha (ZMW) and United States Dollars (USD or US$). Other critical variables relate to maintenance needs, both in annualized maintainable distances and resource envelopes. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was utilized to analyze maintenance and total road expenditure sustainability.

3.3.2 Hypothesis

Firstly, it has already been pointed out in the problem statement that this study aimed to analyze road financing strategies in Zambia, focusing on the last ten years, with the view to ascertaining the extent to which roads budgets prioritize maintenance, as contrasted with prioritizing new construction. The study, further, aimed to establish that there exists a mismatch in the allocation of resources, to the extent that prioritizing new construction was being done to the detriment of maintenance, the focus of an efficient road asset management system. If this paradox does indeed exist, the study would attempt to establish how sustainable the existing road financing paradigms are, especially in view of government policy and current strategies, and the consequential effect of that on the national economy.

Evidently, a number of hypotheses had to be explored in arriving at the specific and general objectives of this study. However, the following hypotheses reigned supreme:

1) There is a mismatch between the road maintenance needs and resources allocated due to preference of road construction to road maintenance.
2) Scientific tools, such as Highway Management Systems, are not used to determine maintenance interventions, as such; the allocated resources are not optimized in terms of needs.
3) Zambia is losing the road asset because the road sector strategies are at variance with the transport policy.

These hypotheses would be tested against the results of data analysis, and the outcomes would be used to make conclusions and recommendations on the research topic.

3.3.3 Data Collection

The substantial part of this study has had to depend on secondary data sources. However, primary data sources in which questionnaires were delivered to targeted institutions were utilized through the conduct of structured interviews with industry specialists. Annual Reports for the National Road Fund Agency (NRFA) and the Needs Assessment Report of Road Development Agency (RDA) were consulted fully, as well as any other official publications made by the two Agencies, including the Annual Work Plans (AWPs). The World Bank data bank was reviewed along with many other sources which have been aptly referenced throughout this treatise. The Revised Sixth National Development Plan of the Ministry of Finance was a vital source of data relating to Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) of the Republic of Zambia.

A comprehensive list of data sources included:

- RDA Needs Assessment Report (2012 – 2016),
- Agency Annual Reports,
- Annual Work Plans,
- Sixth National Development Plan (2012 – 2016),
- Feasibility Study Reports (e.g. tolling Reports),
- Conference proceedings,
- Magazines, journals, and newspapers,
- Internet sources,
- Brochures,
- Text books,
- Master’s Thesis (Tembo, 2010),
- Etc.

Information sampling was substantially restricted to the past decade, which has seen landmark events and developments in Zambia’s transport sector, in general, and the road sector, in particular. In the last ten years, the following events took place in Zambia’s transport sector:

- The transport policy was launched in May 2012.
- New institutional and legal framework was passed through Acts of Parliament No. 11, 12, and 13, in 2002, leading to the formation of the Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA), Road Development Agency (RDA), and National Road Fund Agency (NRFA), respectively.
- The Road Sector Investment Plan II (2004 – 2013) was executed. The plan came to an end in December 2013, but a RoadSIP II addendum had been issued to extend the mandate of the plan from 2013 to 2015.
- The three Agencies became operational in 2006.
- The road sector governance was questioned by the Office of the Auditor General in 2010, leading to sour relations between the Zambian government and the cooperating partners.
- The RDA produced a comprehensive Needs Assessment Report in March 2011, for the period 2012 - 2016.
- The Sixth National Development Plan 2011/2012 to 2015/2016 as implemented.
- In 2012, The Zambian government announced the launch of the Link Zambia 8,000 program aimed at constructing 8,000km and, hence, doubling the paved road network within five years.

Supplementary primary data was collected through a questionnaire which was sent to the key road sector agencies and other implementing ministries. These included:

- National Road Fund Agency (NRFA),
- Road Development Agency (RDA),
- Road Transport and safety Agency (RTSA),
- National Council for Construction (NCC)
- Ministry of Local Government and Housing (MLGH),
- Ministry of Transport, Communication, Works and Supply, and (MTCWS)
- Ministry of Finance (MoF).

To capture a wider audience, the questionnaire was sent by email to thirty (30) targets that were requested to provide response within seven (7) days. Telephone calls were made in follow-up within 24 hours to encourage the respondents to provide feedback. Of course, some respondents were pretty swift in sending feedback within the a few hours of receipt of the questionnaire. Some responses came through email while others had to send their hardcopy responses in envelops as a way of guaranteeing their anonymity. A sample of the transmittal letter is included in Text Box 4 while the questionnaire is included in Text Box 5 of Appendix B.

Despite repeated reminders, some respondents just did not manage to send feedback even weeks after the window closed. Only twenty (20) people of the thirty (30) actually participated in the survey, with National Council for Construction being the only institution from which no feedback was received. In the author’s view, the sample was considered representative enough to permit the process of data analysis to proceed.

3.3.4 Analysis

The analysis of data was twofold. Firstly, the data collected from secondary sources was collated, analyzed, and results reported. Then, the data collected from the survey collated, analyzed, and the results reported. Specialized interviews were conducted with some principal persons to normalize some seemingly misleading results.

The data collected from secondary sources was analyzed using mathematical and statistical methods as well as qualitative methods. The most important step was the establishment of a baseline of projected road sector needs and resources. By taking into account issues such as inflation, foreign exchange rates, and current construction unit costs, the needs were updated and further projected to 2016, the closure year for the Sixth national Development Plan.

The analysis included a review of on-going construction projects to determine prevailing commercial unit costs for Routine Maintenance, Periodic Maintenance, Rehabilitation, and Upgrading to bituminous standard road. The discrimination was shown between unit costs for paved and unpaved roads, as well as between the Urban Roads, Primary Feeder Roads (PFR), and the Trunk, Main, and District Roads (TMDs). The estimated 2013 year-end exchange rate of ZMW5.50 to USD1.00 was used to convert unit cost estimates of running contracts from the local currency to the United States dollar equivalent.

It was also essential to discriminate unit costs for Upgrading and or Rehabilitation projects on the basis of Hot-mix Asphalt Concrete (AC) and Surfacing Seals of the type Double Surface Treatment/Dressing (DBST or DBSD). The generic order of unit costs was computed per kilometer and then transformed into second order units of dollars per square meter for ease of comparison with the baseline established in the Road Development Needs Assessment Report (March, 2011). Revised projected costs, and associated increased scope of works due to variations, was taken into account when arriving at the revised estimated unit costs. However, regional and geographical factors were not taken into account. Suffice it to state here that western Zambia predominantly lies in the Zambezi Flood Plain of single-size deep sand were granular materials and rock for road construction are harder to find than in any other parts of the country; thus rendering very high construction costs.

The analysis also included a diagnosis of revenue sources available for the Zambian road sector. These resources were discriminated into local and donor sources of funding, while the local sources were further broken down into the Road Fund and appropriation by the Government Republic of Zambia (GRZ). Notably, sources of funding for the Road Fund include the Fuel Levy and Other Road User Charges (ORUCs), which come into the National Road Fund Agency through the Ministry of Finance. Typically, included in ORUCs are: vehicle license fees, road tax, weighbridge fees and fines, transit tolls, and now toll fees.

An analysis of the Annual Work Plan (AWP) provisions and the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) as enshrined in the Sixth National Development Plan was undertaken. The AWP budget provisions were then matched against the projected needs to establish congruence. The disparity in budgets and needs, it was hoped, would point to the maintenance gap or matched needs. The establishment of the gap would lead to prospects of bridging the funding gap in order to constrain the wasting road asset over time. By contrast, the growing backlog of maintenance would never be cleared if it turned out that more resources were allocated to programs aimed at upgrading gravel roads to bituminous standard. The political will to preserve the wasting asset would be evident in the Sixth National Development Plan and the AWPs.

Table 6: Year-end Foreign Exchange Mid-Rates in Analysis

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Source: Bank of Zambia (www.boz.zm)

Heggie’s thresholds for sustainable maintenance and total roads budgets as a proportion of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) were brought in to assist in answering the question of sustainable financing of road maintenance and construction. In undertaking an analysis of the proportion of maintenance funding in relation to the country’s GDP, all values for Zambia’s GDP (2006 – 2012) were collected from the World Bank Database^[74]. The projected GDP values for 2013 and 2014 were calculated based on policy inflation rate of 7% per annum.

The second part of the analysis involved the administration of a questionnaire to various road sector agencies as a means to obtaining perceptions about road sector practices, strategies, and levels of stakeholder satisfaction with respect to road asset management. Statistical methods applied on the Likert scale methodological questionnaire were also used. Measures of central tendency such as the median and mode were primarily used to infer the levels of consensus, while the range and inter-quartile range were used to ascertain the degree of variability respondent data.

During the analysis, data was classified into four different categories in accordance with the nature of questions. This made it easy to analyze the data although, in principle, each question was analyzed independently, in accordance with the general rules of Likert scale analyses. No data was mobilized into groups which required more detailed analysis of Measures of Consensus using weighted standard deviation methods.

3.3.5 Validation

It was established during literature review that reliability and validity of a given research depends largely on systems employed to collect and analyze data. In this regard, authenticated and published reports were extensively employed to decipher and collect secondary data. A further step was taken to design and disseminate a questionnaire which was used to collect primary data as a way of validating some data collected through secondary sources. Wherever necessary, expert interviews were conducted with industry specialists using carefully crafted questions to elicit high-level information, none of which has been used in a retrogressive manner. Furthermore, the weighted mean, though not a Measure of Consensus in itself, was used to correlate the outcomes of the Likert scale analysis.

4 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

4.1 Introduction

Results of the data analysis are presented in the section accompanied by the analysis of the results, which also makes an attempt to express the nature of relationships established, and whether the hypotheses can stand the test.

4.2 The Process

The results have been reported in the following manner:

1. Results from analysis of secondary data.

Tables 9 to 16 present results of the analysis undertaken on secondary data on the road network, Road Development Agency (RDA) 2011 needs assessment report, and annual work plans, as well as the revised sixth national development plan. Also included in these tables are results of unit cost analysis, expenditures on maintenance and total budget as a proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Results of the analysis on the effect of the Link Zambia 8000 road upgrading program on the medium-term expenditure framework as enshrined in the SNDP are also presented. A typical report on the condition of Zambia’s road network as of 2011-2012 has also been presented in Figure 6.

It should be noted that tables presented in this section are heavily supported by many excel worksheets which, for lack of space, could not be included here but which, nonetheless, have been included in the appendices.

2. Results from analysis of primary data.

Firstly, results from a self-administered questionnaire on road asset management policy framework are presented to give an overview of the administrative compliance levels in Zambia. The template used here was adapted from the World Bank and was used by Banjo et al. (2012; 56-57) to give an example of the Cambodian asset management policy framework. These results are presented in Table 20, and the responses provided by the author are based purely on literature review undertaken for the purposes of this dissertation.

Results of the analysis of primary data sources presented here refer to the data captured during survey through the administered questionnaire. The findings are presented in Table 22, which also shows results of the weighted mean included as a validating check on results of statistical analyses. It should also be noted here that the full set of raw data and analyses of the data using the Likert scales have been included in the appendices.

4.3 Results from Analysis of Secondary Data

A review was conducted on Zambia’s road network as managed by the Road Development Agency (RDA), and the findings relating network size and condition, as reported by RDA are presented in Table 7 and Fig. 6 below.

Table 7: Zambia’s Road Network

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Source: Road Development Agency, Zambia

Figure 6: Zambia’s Road Network Condition, 2012

The maintenance funding gap has been cited as the main cause of deteriorating road conditions in Zambia. The author reproduces his determination of the maintenance funding gap as established in his Master’s Thesis. This is shown here in Table 8 below.

Table 8: Trends in Road Fund and Maintenance Gap in Zambia^[75]

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Note: In this table, the ZMW is rebased from the ZMK used in original table, so are the exchange rates

The Road Development Agency (RDA) Needs Assessment Report (NAR) (2012 – 2016) was reviewed. Table 5-5 of the NAR (2012 – 2016) is reproduced here Table 9, but with distributional analysis results included in the last column.

Table 9: Optimized Budget Run Using HDM IV: TMD Alternative Funding Requirement (2012-2016)

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Adapted from RDA Needs Assessment Report, March 2011, Table 5-5, p. 10

The optimized budget needs of Table 9 had matching interventions in terms of targeted kilometers for the period 2012 – 2016 in order to avoid budget overruns. The analysis in the NAR 2012 – 2016 was shown in Table 5-6 which has been reproduced here in Table 10. However, results of a distributional analysis have been included to show the primary areas of focus in terms of intervention type.

Table 10: Optimized TMD Kilometres of Roads Maintained (2012 – 2016)

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Adapted from RDA Needs Assessment Report, March 2011, Table 5-6, p. 11

The NAR 2012 – 2016 produced results for the unconstrained budget scenario for maintenance on Primary Feeder Roads (PFR) and Urban Roads due to the uncompromising nature of maintenance. This had been reproduced in Table 11 below, as are results of targeted intervention types in Table 12. Tables 11 and 12 give originally reported results in the NAR.

Table 11: PFR^[76] /Urban Funding Requirements (2012 – 2016)

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Source: RDA Needs Report: Table 5-8, p. 12

Table 12: Combined Outputs (Km) for CRN^[77] (2012 – 2016)

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Source: RDA Needs Report: Table 5-11, p. 13

The author manipulated the Needs Assessment Report (NAR) results as reported in Tables 9 and 11 above, and made comparisons with the projected Sixth National Development Plan budget allocations. The results are reported here in Table 13 below. The full analysis for the total updated budget needs on TMD roads are included in Appendix A, Table…., while the total updated budget needs on PFR/Urban roads are included in Table 14 below. It is important to note that although Table 14 below contains annualized updated budget needs along with the original needs, the summation has not been done here to maintain clarity between the original needs contained in NAR and the updated needs in Appendix A Table … in taking cognizance of the Link Zambia 8000 project, a further analysis was conducted on the original upgrading budget needs and the Link Zambia budget needs. Results of this analysis are reported in Table 15 below.

Table 13: Updated PFR/Urban Funding Requirements (2012 – 2016)

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Note: Item has been corrected to read “Urban Paved (PM)” instead of the erroneous “Urban Paved (PM)” contained in the original Report.

Table 14: Upgrading to Bituminous Standard: Analysis of Projected Needs versus Budget

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Estimate of 2012 upgrading km are shown in Appendix A: Table….

Table 15: Planned versus Projected: Financial Needs and SNDP/MTEF Budget

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Source of Re-aligned MTEF figures: Ministry of Finance

An analysis was conducted on the Annual Work Plans as an indicative measure for maintenance and total road expenditures. The results are presented in Table 16 below. The amounts were first computed based on the rebased local currency and were later converted into United States dollars which were then used to make comparative expenditures in relation to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) whose results are presented in Table 18. The total road expenditure for the period from 2012 to 2014, both years inclusive, was computed and results presented in Table 17.

Table 16: Computations for Maintenance and Total Road Expenditures

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Source: Annual Work Plans, NRFA

Table 17: Budget Expenditure as per AWPs (2012 – 2014)

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Table 18: Zambia’s Road Expenditure vs. Gross National Product

Sources for GDP data is the World Bank, while the source for Expenditures is Annual Work Plans, Zambia.

A growth rate of 7%, as reported by the Sunday Mail^[78], has been used to project the 2013 GDP, as well as the 2014 GDP, assuming all else remained equal. The 2014 GDP is merely for comparative purposes in the study.

A complete budget analysis was conducted on the Annual Work Plans (AWPs) from 2006 to 2014, on the major items relating to maintenance, rehabilitation, and upgrading, as well as consultancies. The results of this analysis are shown in Table 19 below, while the complete analysis is included in Appendix A, Table 24.

Table 19: Annual Work Plan Proportional Expenditure (2006 – 2014)

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Source: Annual Work Plans, NRFA

Figure 7 presents the trend analysis for maintenance, rehabilitation, and upgrading projects as per approved Annual Work Plans. It is important to note that the 2014 projection does not include the upgrading projects being funded under the Link Zambia 8000 Project, whose estimate for 2014 stands at US$350 million. Had this amount been included, the true reflection of sharply spiked upgrading proportion would have been shown.

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Figure 7: Annual Work Plan Budget Trends (2006 – 2014)

4.4 Results from Analysis of Primary Data

Presented in Table 20 are results of the self-administered questionnaire on asset management policy framework.

Table 20: Self-administered Adapted Asset Management Policy Framework

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Adapted from Banjo et al. (2012; 56-57)

Survey questionnaires were sent by email to thirty (30) people, and only twenty (20) actually participated in the survey (N = 20). The questionnaire comprised of nineteen questions in the following categories:

- Category 1: 5-point scale of very high to very low (4 No.)
- Category 2: 5-point scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree (8 No.)
- Category 3: 2-point scale of ipsative nature with “yes” and “no” responses (5 No.)
- Category 4: open descriptive responses (2 No.)

The following table shows the scales used for the four categories stated above.

Table 21: Likert Scales used in the Analysis

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The summary of survey results is shown in Table 22.

Table 22: Summary of Survey Results

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4.5 Analysis

Table 8 exposes the immensity of Zambia’s road network, which includes a staggering 40,454km as the Core Road Network (CRN) out of the total gazetted road network of 67,571km. In simple terms, the CRN represents 60% of the total road network of which only 23% is paved, while only 14% of the total road network is actually paved. With 86% of the total road network in gravel or earth road status, it almost speaks for itself where effective and efficient road asset management systems should be implemented. The low cost of maintaining gravel roads annually may not necessitate huge budget for unpaved roads although firm indicator should be base on life-cycle costs due to other factors which come in such as traffic levels, environmental conditions, and quality of gravel materials.

The condition of unpaved roads varies annually and, sometimes, monthly, depending weather conditions and traffic levels. In Zambia, most of the deterioration in unpaved road condition is observed during the rainy season. The Road Development Agency undertakes annual surveys to determine the road condition indices for both the paved and unpaved roads within the CRN. The variations are considerable, as can be seen in Fig. 6, which gives the status of the road condition on the CRN for 2011/2012. About 68% of the paved Trunk, Main, and District (TMDs) Roads were in good condition while 29% was in fair condition.

On the contrary, over 42% of unpaved TMD roads, 78% of Primary Feeder Roads (PFR), and 70% of unpaved urban roads was in poor condition (about 31,051km, or 76% of the CRN or 46% of total road network). While there might be some slight improvement in the condition of urban roads due to the ongoing Urban Road Rehabilitation (URRP), the condition of PFR substantially remains unchanged. This reflects the state of a road network in peril and one whose crisis could only be addressed by drastic reductions in the maintenance funding gap. Table 9 below, extracted from the author’s prior research contained in his Master’s Thesis, shows the widening maintenance funding gap which the country has recently been experiencing. This, unfortunately, exhibits itself in the road network condition of Fig. 6, which inherently buttresses the historical challenge of ensuring an adequately funded maintenance budget.

Literature review revealed the presence of a pilot project for maintaining about 1,100km of selected gravel roads in five districts under the Agriculture Development Support Project (ADSP). The project, running from 2008 to February 2014, was supported by the World Bank through the concept of performance-based contracting. The fact that there was an earlier pilot project (2006 – 2010) supported by the European Union for rehabilitating and maintaining some 3,500km is sufficient grounds for Zambia’s road sector to be weaned off this donor support and permit local resources to take charge of these affordable and sustainable road maintenance initiatives. The fact that 86% of the total road network is unpaved only goes to us show permanent gravel and earth roads are going to be with us in Zambia. The lessons learned in the North Dakota Case Study as captioned in Text Box 1, where the State was ripping existing paved roads to gravel, reinforces the concept that it far cheaper to maintain gravel roads, and that gravel roads are with us permanently.

However, the reported road condition of about 68% of the paved Trunk, Main, and District (TMDs) Roads which was in good condition and 29% of which was in fair condition could require further analysis to validate the result. Nonetheless, the condition of this category of the road network could not be reasonably be expected to have fallen into the poor condition and thereby requiring the much needed rehabilitation on most of the network such as: Chembe – Mansa – Nchelenge road, Livingstone – Sesheke road, and Lusaka – Mongu road. Other roads are: Kafue – Mazabuka, Lusaka – Chirundu, Serenje – Nakonde, Solwezi – Mwinilunga, Chingola – Solwezi, Ndola – Kitwe – Chingola, Great East Road, and Chipata – Lundazi Lot 2, Lusaka – Ndola, etc. These desolate stretches of the paved road network which lay in poor condition for some time will no doubt improve further the proportion of the paved road network, but to suggest that 97% (68%+29%) of the paved TMDs is in good and fair condition is to overstate the achievement, and it defeats the whole purpose of the on-going rehabilitation on most of the paved road network on TMDs. There lies a danger in overstatement of achievements as it could be synonymous to pronouncing perfection while still on the chase.

The next phase in the assignment was to determine the budget needs for maintenance and construction and undertake comparisons for purposes of establishing affordability and sustainability. The Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) as enshrined in the Sixth National Development Plan (SNDP) was used as a tool for comparing the road sector budget needs. Although the study covers the past decade, the SNDP covers the period from 2011/2012 to 2016. Therefore, past and futuristic trends were incorporated into the study.

To begin with, the Road Development Agency (RDA) Core Road Network Needs Report (2012 – 2016)^[79] was reviewed. The optimized 2012 – 2016 TMD budget as presented in the Needs Report is presented in Table 9 while the equivalent optimized projected kilometers have been presented in Table 10. It was immediately established that while the Needs Report had focused on Routine Maintenance (about 90.5% of the total distance to be maintained); most of the resources were to be actually consumed by upgrading to bituminous standard (54.3%). Accordingly, about US$ 1.657 billion would be required to maintain and construct an average about 20, 000km per annum for the total period to 2016. Interestingly, only a total of 1,246.54km was earmarked from 2012 to 2016 at a total projected cost of about US$ 899.56 million.

Another analysis was conducted to establish the budget needs for the Primary Feeder Roads (PFR) and Urban Roads. Starting with Table 5-… and Table 5-… of the Needs Report (2012 – 2016), a number of results were arrived at. Table 11 shows that a total expenditure of US$2,799.91 million was planned to be spent on PFR/Urban road in which emphasis was placed on periodic maintenance of urban paved roads (33%), periodic maintenance of PFR (36%), and routine maintenance of PFR (19%). Periodic maintenance of unpaved urban and routine maintenance of urban road network was to share 5% and 7%, respectively.

The corresponding kilometers in Table 12 showed emphasis placed routine maintenance at 84% (46% for TMD^[80], 10% for urban roads, and 28% for PFR), while a total of 11% was allocated to periodic maintenance as follows; 8% for PFR, 1% for urban paved, and 1% for urban unpaved. Double Surface Treatment (DBST) and upgrading to bituminous standard both received an allocation of 1% each.

The budget needs for optimized TMD roads and PFR/urban roads were updated in view of current market prices as per 2013 running contracts. This was necessitated by the need to determine the magnitude of the shift in financial rates as at 2011, the time for the baseline needs, and 2013. A comparative analysis of unit rates is presented in Appendix A: Table 26 The analysis primarily focused on selected running contracts which are being implemented by the Road Development Agency and the Ministry of Local Government and Housing. The computed average unit costs were then compared with those used in the Needs Report (March, 2011). It was established that unit costs for TMD roads had increased by about 16% and those for urban roads by about 22% from 2011 to 2013. Consequently, the financial budget needs presented were updated according. The updating of upgrading to bituminous standard was based on the computed current average rate per kilometer.

The process of developing financial unit costs may have been rudimentary in some instance, but the following philosophy was generally applicable:

1. Rates for reconstruction, asphalt overlays, DBST, pothole patching, edge repairs were fairly easy to deduce directly from signed contracts due to their prevalence in billed items. The rate for crack-seal was based on emulsion application rates per liter (or equivalent per meter). The rates for drain cleaning or routine paved were based on running routine maintenance contracts in the city of Lusaka for the urban roads, while TMDs were based on estimates of the recently completed regime of RDA routine maintenance performance contracts.
2. Computation of unit rates for unpaved work items was a bit difficult due to the cocktail of interventions normally assigned in one contract such as, spot improvement or re-gravelling, re-gravelling, and grading. For these work items, an escalation factor of 5% in line with policy inflation was used. The unit rate for upgrading to paved standard was based on actual rates in the running upgrading contracts.
3. Exchange rate used for 2013 year-end was US$1.00 to ZMW5.50.

It should be noted that the unit rates so developed for specific work items did not include the general and preliminary items under the General Obligations, which normally vary from contractor to contractor. However, this was not the case for computed average rates based on kilometers as the full contract price was used to obtain the unit costs. While the Needs Report had computed both economic and financial rates for purposes of modeling using HDM-IV, only financial rates were of significance in this study due to comparisons with actual market prices.

As a way of validating price escalation, comparative statistics in the trends of diesel pump price showed that the price of diesel rose by 15% between 2011 and 2013^[81]. The trend analysis, which was based on the published reports posted on the website of the Zambia Energy Regulation Board, is shown in Appendix Table 27 This compares reasonably well with the changes in Zambia’s inflation rate, which also gives a rise of about 15% between 2011 and 2013^[82]. Foreign exchange rates applied in the study were based on the Bank of Zambia historical trends and are as indicated in the Appendix Table 29.

The drastic rise in Zambia’s construction costs had long been observed by then director of the National Council for Construction, Dr. Sylvester Mashamba, who, in 2010, had informed The Post Newspaper that: “In Zambia, the rise in unit rates in the last three to four years could have been attributed to the following factors; increase in fuel costs, banning of 42 contractors, banning of advance payments, and shortage of cement.”^[83]

Taking into account the above observations, it can be shown in Table 13 that the budget needs for PFR/urban road network increased from US$2,799.91 million to US$3,239.91 million for the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) as enshrined in the Sixth National Development Plan (2012 – 2016); the rise representing about 117% for the period. Table 14, on the other hand shows results of the analysis on upgrading, indicating the increase of upgrading to bituminous standard from the planned 1,246.5km to 7,117km (about 571% increment), and the budget needs from US$899.56 million to US$ 5,783.71 million (about 643% increment). Therefore, it has been shown in Table 15 that, all being equal, a total budget of about US$9,914.32 million would be required to realize the realigned programs. But that is only one side of the story; Table 15 also shows that the realigned Sixth National Development Plan (SNDP) (2012 – 2016) has been allocated a sum of US$3, 459.22 million for roads programs. This is despite the fact that the preliminary SNDP (2011 – 2016) had an allocation of US$3, 514.23 million, although it should be noted that the initial SNDP did not post the allocation for the year 2016 as it was deemed to have been outside the MTEF then.

Table 16 provides computations for maintenance and total road expenditures on an annual basis from 2006 to 2014, for purposes of making comparisons of the computed expenditures with the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Results of the total road expenditure and maintenance expenditure as a proportion of the country’s GDP are shown in Table 18. In the period under review, the projected average maintenance spending was about 0.71% of the GDP to 2013, while the total road expenditure for the same period averaged about 2.49% of the GDP. In essence, both indicators were found to be consistent with, or better than, the Heggie Sustainability Threshold of 0.5-1% of GDP for maintenance and 1-2% of GDP for total road expenditure.

However, Table 18 also reveals the drastic declining maintenance expenditures of about 0.40% and 0.44% for 2013 and projected 2014, respectively, while maintaining a relatively high total road expenditure of 2.71% and 3.51% of GDP^[84] for the years 2013 and 2014, respectively. This clearly demonstrates the impact of over-pronounced projects for upgrading roads to bituminous standard over road asset management through maintenance.

Zambia’s excellent historical expenditure framework of maintenance in relation to the country’s GDP seems to have been upheld from 2006 up to the year 2012, but the declining fortunes appear to be waning in line with the major policy shift to upgrading of gravel roads to bituminous standard as pronounced under the Link Zambia 8000 in which the Zambian government is targeting to pave 8,000km of road network within five (5) years.

The Annual Work Plan (AWP) analysis of Table 19 shows the allocations, in percentage terms, of the various road programs for the period 2006 – 2014.clearly, maintenance spending, in terms of routine and periodic maintenance has declined considerably since 2010. The observed downward trends: 31.1% (2010), 18.4% (2011), 22.6% (2012), 14.3% (2013), and 12.3% for 2014, appears to be a skewed mirror image of the rise observed from 2006 (29.7%), 2007 (31.2%), 2008 (58.8%), and 35.9% for 2009.

The same reporting has seen the increase in allocation for upgrading to bituminous standard from about 8.5% in 2006 to about 21.8% in 2018. This contrasts, in some way, the budget analysis plotted in Fig. 7 which shows a downward trend in both upgrading and maintenance budget allocation. Suffice to say that the Link Zambia 8000 project is not fully represented in the AWP for 2014 and much of it was funded through supplementary funding in 2013. The sheer volume of increased rehabilitation showing in Fig. 7 is an absolute indication of a wasting road asset, which is not properly cared for through routine and periodic maintenance in order to extend its service life; for how else would rehabilitation spending be rising in the face of declining maintenance spending.

The short-term budget analysis for the years 2012 to 2014 is shown in Table 17, indicating a total budget expenditure of about ZMW12,515 million (or US$2,279 million). This expenditure covers three out of five years of the Sixth National Development Plan, thereby leaving only 2015 and 2016 in which the government should spend the shortfall on the total update budget needs of US$9,914.23 million, as projected in this study. Whether this is feasible in light of fiscal challenges and the need to spend wisely around the economy remains to be seen at a later stage. Besides, the projected budget needs are only about 287% of planned SNDP budget of US$3,459 million under the given constraints.

The scope to consign the government to road construction contracts in excess of the budget is very high, and this would increase miserable expenditure on maintenance programs. Election campaigns could be a major driver as we saw in the Ghanaian Case Study in Text Box 3, but there is a precedent in Zambia already set in 2008. As already revealed in Literature Review, the findings of the Office of Auditor General’s forensic audit on the RDA, published May 17, 2010, for the period 2006 – 2009 showed that the RDA had exceeded the provisional ZMW685 million provided for by parliament on local resources in the 2008 budget by committing government to contracts in the sum of ZMW 1,643 million, resulting in an over-commitment/over-procurement of ZMW 1,015 million. The report further observed that five (5) road contracts in amounts totaling ZMW182.46 million had been procured outside of the 2008 Annual Work Plan and authority to procure the same was not available for audit. If not properly handed, such commitments could work adversely to the national economy.

Ironically, expenditure on Techno-economic Feasibility Studies and Detailed Engineering Designs only averaged about 5.2% of the Annual Work Plans for the period from 2006 to 2014. Legitimate concerns could be raised about the quality of road designs that emanate from such a low-level of expenditure, and what impact that has on pavement durability. Additional worries should concern the fiscus for contracts signed in the absence of engineering designs and the startling revelation that Zambia’s road construction costs are too high in comparison with the rest of the region. There is a high likelihood that the fiscus could be spending more on upgrading projects due to variations arising from lack of designs at contract inception, and thereby robbing the nation of the yearned maintenance funding requirements. As a result, the road agencies are unable to undertake cheap preventive maintenance works such as pothole patching, resealing, crack-seal, road striping, installation of road furniture such as guardrails and signage, which is characteristic of Zambia’s road network. This also reflects in the neglected urban road network which has since been outgrown by sprawling townships, and there appears no room for the well-drained paved urban road network catching up in the medium-to-long term. Or will it be viewed as dereliction of duty on the part of those charged with implementation of road asset management programs.

Self-administered framework

The results of the self-administered questionnaire using the adapted asset management policy framework were presented in Table 20. Interestingly, fourteen out of the sixteen questions had affirmative responses. In principle, this means that Zambia must be doing extremely well in terms of efficient road asset management. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are now discussed below.

The fundamental question which asset management aims to address is one of ownership for the various types of assets. In Zambia’s case, the Public Roads Act No. 12 of 2002 is categorical in placing the total ownership of all public roads in the custody of the Road Development Agency (RDA). There can, therefore be no ambiguity as at who takes responsibility of urban, feeder, and national highways especially between the Ministry of Local Government and Housing and RDA. The beauty about the Act is that it permits the Minister of Transport, Communication, Works, and Supply to appoint Local Road Authorities as agents of RDA in taking custody of defined road networks, but the back stops at RDA.

In simple terms, the Act has placed asset management and maintenance functions, as well as asset development functions under the RDA. The responsibility for maintaining the various categories of road assets, classification, and inventory has been placed under the RDA and its Local Road Authorities. Works of emergency nature, routine and periodic maintenance requirements are determined by the RDA in liaison with the Local Road Authorities and the Ministry of Local Government and Housing. The Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit, operating under Office of the Vice President, also helps the RDA to identify emergency works along the road networks, but the responsibility for planning maintenance intervention, carrying out of the works, and supervision is retained by the RDA. In many instances, RDA would opt to use Force Account approaches for small-to-medium type of works using their Regional Managers, or prefer to use outsourced methods for larger works. Under the Act, the RDA is mandated to employ the services of contractors and consultants in the execution and supervision of its works. In all the cases, financing of maintenance and emergency works is done by the National Road Fund Agency (NRFA) as enshrined in the NRFA Act No. 13 of 2002. The primary sources of these maintenance funds were identified to be Fuel Levy, Other Road User Charges, and tolling.

In terms of priorities for road asset development and expansion, the Transport Policy (2002) provides guidance by vesting the responsibility on the government, as well as the RDA. The emphasis was placed on the government, which is why the Annual Work Plans always have a component of earmarked government funding under GRZ^[85]. The implication was that the implementing agencies would not be in a position in a position to subvert government interest in extending the paved road networks, and the only thing requested of the government was to provide resources appropriated from the fiscus.

The major incongruence identified in the Public Roads Act No. 12 of 2002 and the NRFA Act No. 13 of 2002 is the missing vital link for efficient and sustainable asset management; one which defines the balance between expansion of the network and preservation of what is rehabilitated. The inherent danger of combining both the maintenance and construction budgets under the National Road Fund Agency (NRFA) is the crowding out of maintenance by new road construction. This so because funding for both maintenance and new road construction is forwarded to the NRFA from the treasury, sometimes, without any discrimination as to which money is meant for maintenance or new road construction especially in times of budget deficits. Unfortunately, by managing funding for both maintenance and new construction, the NRFA has transformed itself into a third-generation road fund, but without having some amendments in institutional and legal framework to empower it to go beyond the traditional sources of funding roads in its own capacity without having to resort wholly to the fiscus.

In terms of adoption and use of appropriate asset management technologies, it was established that low-volume sealed roads (LVSR) and labor-intensive technologies had been well adopted and piloted in the past, but they remain less preferred when it comes to use in sustainable maintenance and construction methods. For instance, hot-mix asphalt still remains a techno-political choice of preference for many low-volume roads, leading to some reactions that Zambian roads are perhaps over-engineered. Otta seals have been attempted on a pilot level but without much success. While labor-intensive methods of maintaining unpaved roads remain a key training program under the National Council for Construction, the road agencies are no position to explain why no roads are being rolled on the basis of that technology. Performance-based roads have been successfully piloted with the help of the European Union and the World Bank, but the road agencies are not budgeting to roll out the program. For a nation so depraved of funding for road maintenance and construction efficient road asset management can only survive when low-cost high-impact technologies are embraced.

On the other hand, government’s speculation about the RDA’s capability to deliver fully a well maintained road network on the entire network has never been hidden. For instance, the government has always maintained a strategic partnership with the Zambia National Service (ZNS) roads unit over and above the creation of a Rural Roads Unit (RRU) under the Ministry of Transport, Communication, Works, and Supply in 2008. These two units have played a significant role in maintenance of unpaved roads throughout the country under the Force Account mechanism.

Reinforcing the role of ZNS, Finance Minister, Alexander Chikwanda disclosed to Times of Zambia^[86] that “plans were under way to finance the procurement of equipment for ZNS meant for grading of rural roads,” aimed at improving access to markets. The Minister explained further that development had been hampered by the lack of infrastructure, which had made it difficult to move produce. This is not only commendable, but it will also compliment the work being done by the RRU which was equipped by the government in 2008 through a US$39 million loan from the Chinese Exim Bank. Actually, the RRU has, using its In-house maintenance, done commendable works on both urban and rural unpaved roads, and has been used effectively by RDA and NRFA to carry out routine and periodic maintenance works on district and main roads, and some trunk roads such as the Great North Road between Serenje and Mpika.

Survey results

The ensuing analysis involved a critical look at the responses to the questionnaire which was sent to various road sector agencies and other implementing ministries in a survey aimed at obtaining perceptions about road sector policies, strategies, and levels of stakeholder satisfaction. Statistical methods were applied on the Likert scale methodology. Measures of central tendency such as the median and mode were used to ascertain the levels of consensus among participants, while the range and inter-quartile ranges were used to ascertain the degree of variability in responses. In total, twenty (20) people participated in the survey. Results of the survey and preliminary analysis have been presented in Table 22.

During the analysis, data was classified into four different categories in accordance with the nature of questions. This made it easy to analyze the data although, in principle, each question was analyzed independently. The weighted average, though not a Measure of Consensus in itself, was used to validate the results of the analysis. Disagreements between the weighted averages and the median and mode methods were noted in some instances although the majority responses demonstrated consensus. The full set of raw data and computations are included in Appendix B. The raw data for category 1 and 2 questions is included in Table 41, while the raw data for category 3 and 4 questions is included Table 42. Table 43 shows the analysis for category 1 questions, Table 44 for category 2 questions, and Table 45 for category 3 questions; while table 46 shows the analysis of category 4 questions. The weighted means are calculated in Table 47 and Table 48 for category 1 and 2 questions, and category 3 and 4 questions, respectively. Below, I analyze the survey results.

The average stay in position of respondents as revealed during the survey was about 7.75 years. This was reflected in their inferred knowledge of Zambia’s transport policy which was rated “high” on the Likert scale. The inter-quartile range for this question was 0.5, indicating very low variability in the responses. A validation exercise using the weighted mean yielded a score of 2.1, which was equivalent to response of “high knowledge” on the Likert scale. The respondents’ role in the road sector Annual Work Plan preparation was rated “high” on the Likert scale with an inter-quartile range of 1.5, indicating low variability in the responses. A validation exercise using the weighted mean yielded a score of 2.2, which was equivalent to response of “high participation” in road sector budget preparation. At this point, there could be no doubt that the road sector experts, who possess high knowledge of the country’s transport and who participate highly in road sector budget preparation, were involved in the survey.

The question on the use of scientific budgeting processes and needs assessment was an ipsative one and a unanimous “no” answer was given by the respondents. A validating exercise yielded a weighted mean of 0.35 to buttress the respondent’s blatant denial of any knowledge of use of scientific tools in road asset management. The respondents were also unanimous in declaring that no Pavement Management Systems (PMS), or indeed, and Road Management System was in use. Fortunately, this author, having worked in the Planning Department of the Road Development Agency (RDA) possesses knowledge of existence of a Highway Management System in the agency, except that its use does not yield results which could be considered employable in the development of Annual Work Plans; and hence its invincibility to the key stakeholders. In that regard, the respondents’ answers have been upheld in this study. Unless the RDA does more to demonstrate that the Highway Management System can direct the needs assessment and resource allocation, efficient maintenance of the road asset would be a far-fetched dream. In actual fact, the findings here are in strong agreement with the declining maintenance funding for 2013 and 2014 in the midst of rising total road expenditure, which has also seen a sharp rise in the funding to rehabilitation, contrary to efficient asset management principles.

On whether the roads budget, or Annual Work Plans (AWP), were in line with the Sixth National Development Plan (SNDP), the respondents were “neutral”, but with such a low variability in the responses, it begs further questioning why road sector experts would opt to remain neutral. It could be that they knew for sure that the AWPs were incongruent with the SNDP but that they held some belief in government’s capability to borrow additional resources in a bid to even out the deficits. However, a validating weighted mean score of 2.6 somewhat reveals a slight inclination of the respondents to almost agree that the AWPs were aligned to the SNDP. They were also in agreement that the SNDP was properly linked to the national budgets, but unanimously disagreed that the road sector resources matched the needs. This case is further evidence of the huge projected funding deficit already established on the implementation of the SNDP from 2012 to 2016.

Such a mismatch of needs and resources could not be explained technically alone, but linking it to political influence easily explains why the agencies would aptly put aside scientific decision-making tools and go on to commit the nation to programs that would experience encumbering negative cash-flows. The detrimental effect of such practices would reflect in increased deferred maintenance and a further decline in road asset value.

A further two ipsative questions were posed to the respondents: whether the SNDP would clear the backlog of maintenance by 2016, and whether the resources required to clear the backlog of maintenance were known. The respondents were unanimous in their “no” response to both questions. A validating weighted mean score of 0.05 and 0.4 was obtained, respectively. Besides, the median and modal score of “zero” was given to the open questions on specifying the actual needs and resources projected to 2016. Clearly, if a functional Highway Management System were in place, respective needs and projected resources would have been scientifically determined, and disseminated to all the key stakeholders. However, the mere absence of such essential information from the key stakeholders, casts considerable doubt on the capability of the road agencies to effectively and manage the road asset in Zambia.

In recognition of the challenges of resource mobilization for road sector programs, the respondents were asked to state the significance of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) in Zambia. The analysis yielded a multi-modal response to the question: “very high”, “high”, and “Neutral”. The inter-quartile range of 2.5 shows high variability in the responses, and the difficult by the respondents to easily agree on what role private participation can play in Zambia’s road sector. A validating weighted mean score of 2.6 shows the respondents’ tendency towards the “average” role. In principle, the respondents saw “high” participation of the private sector in Zambia’s road sector. Indeed, government’s commit in wooing private sector finance is reflected in the PPP Act No. of 2009 and the transport policy. However, the passing of the Tolling Policy S.I. No. 73 of 2013 in which the Road Development Agency was handed the responsibility of collecting the tolling revenues does, in some way, scupper the opportunities which could have been seized by the private sector to increase their participation in the Zambian road sector through concession contracts such as BOTs. Whereas the Aurecon Study Report^[87] on tolling in Zambia recommended the possible formation of the Special Purpose Vehicle as a facility for fostering National Road Tolling Program, the sudden submersion of the best tolling philosophies for the nation diverts significantly from the original vision of having an efficient and effective private sector participation in rebuilding our broken down road asset with minimum government resources.

The respondents were tested for their knowledge of Road Asset Management and whether Road Asset Management principles were being applied in Zambia. They reported an “average” knowledge about Road Asset Management, with very low variability in the responses as reflected in the inter-quartile range value of 1. The weighted mean score of 2.75 confirmed the respondents’ tendency towards average. Further, the respondents reported “low” application of Road Asset Management principles in Zambia. This low rating of asset management principles in the country precisely confirms the poor condition of most of the nation’s road asset as reflected in Fig. 6.

Interestingly, the respondents felt that Road Asset Management was not a priority of the Zambian government, amid a high variability in the responses which saw the median score of “neutral” but a modal score of “disagree”. The weighted mean score of 2.9 places the response in the “neutral” category. The indeterminacy may be acceptable where the respondents deem it fit to pave room for factual establishment. They went further to state that the legal framework prioritizing Road Asset Management in Zambia was not in place. This is contrary to the author’s findings during literature review in which it was established that it is the transport policy objective to:

Preserving investment already made in roads through maintenance as priority for sustainable national development [and] to provide a nation-wide, well-maintained, safe, and sustainable road network in order to promote national socio-economic development.^[88]

It now begs the question why the respondents, possessing such high level of knowledge about the transport policy and having such a high role in preparation in preparation of the AWPs, could have missed an important clause 4.2.1 regarding government’s desire to prioritize road asset management through sustainable maintenance. There is a huge possibility that the transport policy document, itself, is not well publicized and that technocrats responsible for road asset management do not taken interest in finding out its content. Somehow, much as the transport policy document needs updating, this means that cries about a defective transport policy as the main cause of non-performing road sector strategies cannot hold water. Its emphasis on sustainable maintenance as a means of efficient road asset management is categorical in clause 4.2.1, thereby leaving us with less justification for promotion of new construction in the face of a widening maintenance funding deficit.

As a way of exhaustively dealing with question of road network size against resource envelope, the respondents were requested to state whether an optimized road network was cardinal for efficient asset management in Zambia. They were unanimous in offering “strongly agree” response with a very low variability in the responses. This was also confirmed by a weighted mean score of 1.7 as a validating measure. This response has far reaching implications on the institutional and legal framework in Zambia’s road sector. Either more resources are found to meet the current road network budget needs, or the government considers reduction in the Core Road Network (CRN) to fit into the Sixth National Development Plan Medium-Term Expenditure Framework. The easier and more sustainable of the two approaches to follow would be network reduction. This would improve allocative efficiency in that resources could be put to a better use maintaining roads that consumers would value more highly, and thereby avert the impending market failure. Further, scientific needs assessment and resource allocating tools could be employed more efficiently on an optimized road network leading to elimination of information asymmetries which a have a tendency to accelerate market failures. The benefits to economic and social welfare would be massive due to longer-term more sustainable asset management programs rather than the short, intensive, construction projects. Good quality and pothole-free roads would also ensure guaranteed road safety.

The back, therefore, stops at the government to ensure that, with the help of parliament; they legislate and regulate business operations in the road sector to ensure an efficient management of the road asset. The government must ensure there is an effective and efficient transport policy, one which is sustainable and ensures equity of interventions. Any abrogation of the transport policy and associated road agency rules and laws should be accompanied by punitive actions as deterrents. Above all, the government, itself, must be seen to observe its own policies and regulations in implementation of road sector programs. This is especially important to ensure systematic and measured development, and or extensions to the existing paved road network, seeing that the respondents were in agreement about upgrading of gravel roads to bituminous standard even in the face of maintenance challenge.

Another interesting outcome of the survey was the refusal by the respondents to confine the road sector budget needs to available financial resources. There was a high variability in the responses, but a validating weighted mean placed the response in the “neutral” category. Admittedly, it would be difficult to confine road sector needs to available resources since road projects take the form of multi-year rolling programs, and even then, for one reason or another, some projects move faster than others, and thereby impose a variable cash-flow. Whoever, it prudent expenditure requires that critical indicators in relation to the Gross Domestic Product and maintenance-to-construction ratio should serve as guide to determination of what quantum of projects could be implemented in the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework.

The outcome of the survey questionnaire brings to the fore some of the challenges facing some great nations and how they try to address them. The Transportation Research Board (2008; 11) noted, about the United Sates, that the challenges facing their highway system could “not be addressed simply by spending more money, even if doing so were possible,” adding that funding was currently constrained by the sharp drawdown in the Federal Highway Trust Fund and that there was a general unwillingness to raise fees or taxes that supported transportation infrastructure. Successfully addressing many of their challenges would “require new and more efficient ways of doing things – new materials, better and faster construction techniques, … new financing mechanisms, options for pricing use of the system, …”, the Report suggested.

However, the Transport Research Board Special Report 297 (2009; 215) made a fair conclusion to matter. It stated that:

Ideal rules for finance decisions in the public interest are not difficult to compose; however, reform is challenging because finance-related decisions are necessarily political and are dictated by incentives and motives of the active participants in the political process. Reform will entail changing these incentives to align them more closely with the public interest.^[89]

Finally, it is good to acknowledge that the role of money in project finance cannot be ignored in arriving at what has to be done and in what budget. As observed by the Carll (1967; 51 – 70), “[money] its availability, or lack of it, indicates whether an investment project is financially feasible, or to what extent there is “fiscal capability” for carrying out a highway program.”^[90]

5 CONCLUSION

5.1 Introduction

A diagnostic study into road financing paradoxes which have led to inefficient Road Asset Management in Zambia was undertaken. Road financing strategies were reviewed and analyzed as well as the policy and strategic framework for road asset management. Road sector budget needs and the Annual Work Plans were also analyzed to determine any incongruence which might exist therein. In addition, a survey was carried out within the road sector agencies and other implementing ministries, using a questionnaire based on the Likert scale approach. Statistical methods were used to analyze the data collected. The analysis of data, which also included results of literature review, was undertaken. A self-administered questionnaire on road asset policy and strategy framework was also completed. Research findings were reported accordingly.

5.2 Main Conclusions

In arriving at the main conclusions, serious note had to be taken that road pavements have a design life, and a probable service life, and that pavement performance invariably depended on routine and periodic maintenance, which forms the core for efficient road asset management. It was, further, noted that matching resources for prioritized maintenance should be available at the right time and for the fitting maintenance interventions, failure to which the road asset wastes away more rapidly than it can be replaced. Reported below are the main conclusions of the study.

6. Legal and Institutional Framework:

The study concluded that Zambia has in place a functional legal and institutional framework necessary for implementation of effective and efficient road asset management. However, some inadequacies do exist therein due to absence of a predefined balance between maintenance and construction.

7. Financial Support to the Road Sector:

The study concluded that the nation has been offering sufficient support to the road sector, when measured in relation to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the period 2006-2012. The total roads expenditure averaged about 2.49% of the GDP between 2006 and 2013, and is projected to be around 2.61% of the GDP in 2014. Evidently, this was above the upper limit of 2% recommended by Heggie (2004).

The expenditure on road maintenance averaged about 0.71% of the GDP between 2006 and 2013. This, too, falls within the 0.5 – 1% limit recommended by Heggie. However, the maintenance expenditures of about 0.40% in 2013 and the projected rate of 0.44% in 2014 sends warning shots about the country’s new road asset management philosophy. With this in mind, it was difficult to object the evidence adduced in Table 5 by the author from his prior Master’s Thesis about the ever increasing maintenance funding gap. Further, it was no wonder that the survey respondents were in total agreement that road asset management principles were not a priority of the Zambian government, and thereby calling for an optimized road network for efficient asset management.

In real terms, the study concluded that the total realigned expenditure framework for the Sixth National Development Plan (2012 – 2016) of US$3.459 billion was dwarfed by the updated total budget needs of US$9.914 billion for the same period, which substantially arose due to astronomical increase in the amount of upgrading under Link Zambia 8000.

8. Construction Unit Costs:

The study established that construction unit costs had risen by about 16% on Trunk, Main, and District Roads, and by about 22% on Urban Roads, from 2011 to 2013. In the same period, the diesel pump price had also risen by about 15%, thereby drawing some parallels with the nation’s economic activity. The changes were similar in nature to changes in inflation rates for the same period.

9. Private Finance Initiative:

The study concluded that private finance initiative had a role to play in the Zambian road sector. This was supported by the legislative arrangements in place such as the PPP Act No. 14 of 2009, but that for some reason, Statutory Instrument SI No. 73 of 2013 for Road Tolling still empowered the Road Development Agency to collect road tolls without the involvement of the private sector.

10. Use of Scientific Tools:

The survey respondents were in exceeding agreement that the use of scientific decision-making tools, such as Highway Management System, or Pavement Management System, were not being used. It was, therefore, concluded that the expenditure framework wais not directed at the optimized maintenance interventions. The danger here was wastage of resources due to over-application of resources on roads which needed less maintenance, or the erosion of the asset due to under-budgeting on roads which required more resources for the appropriate maintenance.

11. Network Size:

The study concluded that in order to match resources to the needs, there was need to have an optimized road network, one which was inherently smaller that the current Core Road Network of 40,454km.

5.3 Summary

A road network problem of enormous proportions is unfolding before our eyes, and action is required to stall the wasting away of our road asset. Finances for maintaining our roads have never been enough, and there has been no guarantee that the fiscus alone would ever be able to meet this challenge. Additional budget needs for road construction aggravates the fiscal challenges. While it is important to call for legislative and institutional reforms, it is also cardinal to call for concurrent attitude change of every individual involved in managing and financing our road network. Technocrats and politicians, alike, must learn to respect the guiding legal instruments for efficient road asset management.

The institutional and legal framework is of theoretical excellence, and Zambia’s road implementing agencies have been envied among the peer countries around the globe, but the lack of scientific highway management systems as a basis for determining appropriate maintenance interventions and reciprocal budgets, works to undermine institutional strength and integrity. The successes scored purely based on the goodwill of political office holders tend to favor capital road investments rather than maintenance expenditure, the very basis of an effective and efficient road asset management system. As has been demonstrated in the analysis, the astronomical increase in the volume of roads to be upgraded to bituminous standard has had a knock-down effect on the maintenance budgets for 2013 and 2014, which has now fallen to below 0.5% of the nation’s GDP. The escalating rehabilitation budget is essentially a better indicator of how poor our road asset management has been; vividly positing the signal of a road network that did not receive appropriate maintenance at the right time.

Historical maintenance expenditure averaging about 0.71% of Zambia’s GDP for the period 2006 to 2012 gives the comfort that, perhaps, the fiscus had made sufficient effort in trying to address the problem of declining road standards. Nonetheless, the standard did not experience significant improvements. This seems to point to the fact that the Core Road Network of 40,454km was probably too large for the efficient and effective use of available resources. This is the likely main reason why the asset value continued to decline even though the government was seemingly investing sufficient funds in to road construction and maintenance, in relation to the Gross Domestic Product. The compliance with Heggie’s spending thresholds in the face of escalating budget deficits was paradoxical in nature. Coupled by the low expenditure on techno-economic and detailed engineering designs, which averaged about 5.2% of the annual budgets from 2006 to 2014, there could be no question that most of the road projects in the country were undertaken without designs; and hence the poor quality of completed projects.

Consequently, it should go without saying that most contracts were signed without having designs in place, something which heavily contributed to the problem of principal-agent issues such as negligence in fulfilling duties by the road agencies. The hidden information espouses the agencies’ moral hazard. Therefore, while the government, with all its imperfections, could be viewed to be the solution to the problem of wasting road asset, the road agencies could not be absolved of their role in promoting economic efficiency and equity. The government, of its part would then have to revise the transport policy and ensure that the fiscal policy was also realigned to supporting sustainable road maintenance and construction practices.

The conclusions of this study have shown that there is a mismatch in the road sector needs and available resources, and that the maintenance gap for road asset management was widening. The incongruence was observed in the amount of anticipated upgrading projects in relation with the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework as enshrined in the Sixth National Development Plan; thus further crowding out maintenance. The rising rehabilitation budgets also exposed inefficiencies in the nation’s road asset management.

Finally, the findings in this treatise should be of interest to policy makers and implementers of road maintenance and construction programs, given the huge costs that road-works actually impose on tax payers, on the one hand, as well as the massive national economic gains that are derived from a well-maintained road asset, on the other. It is a conviction of the author that enormous knowledge has been added to the body of knowledge about asset management principles in Zambia, and that future researchers would find this work helpful.

In that regard, the objectives of this study, in line with the initially envisaged significance, have been sufficiently met.

6 RECOMMENDATIONS

6.1 Introduction

The following recommendations are made pursuant to a comprehensive analysis of the results and the conclusions which were drawn from the analysis. Only the recommendations that would greatly marshal the benefits of a well-managed road asset as evidenced in the promotion of mobility, high reliability, and a comfortable and quality ride have been listed here. It should be borne in mind that strategic road asset management results in increased national productivity.

6.2 Recommendations

1. The nation must ensure that an optimized road network, which can be sustainably maintained in accordance with the principles of road asset management, is established. This optimized road network should be bankable and assigned to the Road Development Agency along with the requisite resources in order to prevent further erosion of the asset value. Asset preservation in form of preventive, rather than reactive maintenance, should take centre stage in the revised transport policy document, in which the balance between maintenance and capital road expenditures must also be clearly stated. This would not only reflect strategic thinking but also take into account future economic considerations.
2. Good asset management practices demand decision-support tools and scientific methods for data collection and analysis. Highway Management System (HMS), or Pavement Management Systems (PMS), supported by the Highway Development and Management Model (HDM-IV) can be very effective tools in that regard. A Highway Management System has been in place at the Road Development Agency, but its use has been rendered outmoded by a strong preference for socio-political road projects, which unfortunately tends to favor upgrading of roads over maintenance. It is recommended here that Annual Work Plans that are not based on results of the HMS/HDM-IV should receive no attention if the nation should benefit from asset management systems. Further, the use of scientific tools should be communicated to key stakeholders who, apparently, are ignorant about such processes as could be evidenced from the survey outcomes of Table 22.
3. For the North-South Trade Corridor, which carries most of the freight in the nation, it is recommended that the government considers investing in alternative modes of transport, such as railway, in a bid to leverage the distress caused on the road network by heavy truckloads. This move would ensure prolonged highway lifecycles and work to promote the nation’s competiveness in regional trade. With road tolling now in place, a policy to allocate a percentage of the tolling revenues to development of alternative modes of transport could be considered.
4. A detailed high-level investigation should be launched to establish why construction unit costs have taken such a damaging effect on our competitiveness to deliver affordable roads of longer lengths than we are currently receiving. Focus areas should include the manner in which road maintenance and construction tenders are awarded, possibility of fronting in the bidding process due to citizen empowerment policies, and collusion among foreign state-owned contracting firms. The durability of recently constructed or rehabilitated roads could also be used an indicator of the governance levels in contract administration processes. However, these areas could also form a basis for further research by interested scholars.
5. Procurements of road contracts should be undertaken in line with both the Fiscal and Transport policies, as well as the Public Finance Act to minimize the risk of over-committing the fiscus to programs that may take away the much needed funding to road asset management.

7 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Addo-Abedi, F. Y., Ellevset, O. E. and Benmaamar, M. (2008). Status of Road Sub-Sector Reforms in Sub-Sahara Africa.
2. Aurecon Report: Feasibility Study for Tolling of Selected Roads/Road Links and Bridges in Zambia. February 2011; p. 169
3. Banjo, George, et al. (2012). Rural Transport, Improving its Contribution to Growth and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. Working Paper No. 93. SSATP. pp. 56-57
4. Brue, L. S. and Mcconnell R. C. (2007). Essentials of Economics. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Edition. pp 325 – 333
5. Candidate Support Pack. Higher National Diploma in Management, Management Research (DV81_36). Scottish Qualifications Authority. January 2009.
6. Carll, R. Richard (1967). Highway Fund Distribution Policy. Highway Research Board. pp. 51-70
7. Clarke, R. J. (2005). Research Methodologies, Research Models and Methodologies.
8. Daily Nation, Wednesday September 25, 2013, Vol. 3, Issue 573. p.1
9. Eberts, R (2010). Understanding the Impact of Transportation on Economic Development.
10. Gananadha, N. (2001). Case Study: The Zambian Experience of a Road Fund, Rural Transport Knowledge Base, Rural Travel and Transport Program.
11. Gwilliam, Ken et al. (2008). Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic, Roads in Sub-Saharan Afri ca. Summary of Background Paper 14.
12. Harral, Clell et al. (2011). Maintaining Road Assets: A Fresh Look at The World Bank’s 1988 Policy Paper “Road Deterioration In Developing Countries ”; p. viii
13. Heggie, I. G (1999). Second Generation Road Funds: Emerging "Good" Practice.
14. http://data.worldbank.org/country/zambia. Accessed December 30, 2013.
15. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis. accessed December 9, 2013.
16. http://news.myjoyonline.com/business/201001/40452.asp. Published January 12, 2010. Accessed January 20, 2010
17. http://pecos.ices.utexas.edu/research/activities/validation-methods/. Accessed September 5, 2013.
18. http://psycology.about.com/od/hindex/g/hypothesis.htm. accessed December 9, 2013
19. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177016136951.htm. Accessed Jul 10, 2013. Story published by Michael Arndt, April 29, 2010
20. http://www.erb.org.zm/content.php?viewpage =erffs. Accessed January 17, 2014
21. http://www.livescience.com/21940. accessed December 9, 2013.
22. http://www.lusakatimes.com/2010/06/21/inadequate -funds-cited-reason-uncompleted-roads/. accessed January 13,2014
23. http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=41601. Dated Thursday, December 5, 2013. Accessed December 12, 2013.
24. http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=12934. Accessed January 14, 2014
25. http://www.property24.com/articles/r18bn-zimbabwe%E2%80%993-new-road-toll-plazas/17491. accessed January 11, 2014
26. http://www.statpac.com/surveys/research-methods.htm. Accessed September 5, 2013.
27. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/zambia/currency. accessed January 14, 2014.
28. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/zambia/inflation-cpi. accessed January 14, 2014.
29. Jonker, Jan and Pennink, Bartjan (2010). The Essence of Research Methodology; A Concise Guide for Master and PhD Students in Management Science. Springer Publishers. p. v
30. Knight, S. & Cross, D. (2012). Using Contextual Constructs Model to Frame Doctoral Research Methodology. pp. 49-50.
31. Lusaka Times, December 9, 2013. http://www.lusakatimes.com/ accessed December 9, 2013.
32. National Road Fund Agency, Annual Report 2012, p. 30
33. Newbold, P.; Calson L. W.; and Thorne, M. B. (2013). Statistics for Business and Economics. 8th edition. Pearson Education Limited.
34. Okert, David (2005). Substantive Scale Verification: A Likert Scale Analysis and Critique of University Student Pedagogical Activity Preferences. Jalt Hokkaido Journal Vol. 9, p. 55.
35. Pinard, I. Michael (2012). Progress on Commercialized Road Management in Sub-Saharan Africa. Working Paper No. 92. Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program.
36. Raballand, Gaël & Whitworth, Alan (2012). The Crisis in The Zambian Road Sector. ZIPAR Working Paper No.5; pp 12 – 14
37. Raballand, Gaël; Kanuka, Charles; & Giersing, Bo (2008). The Impact of Regional Liberalization and Harmonization in Road Transport Services: A Focus on Zambia and Lessons for Landlocked Countries. Policy Research Working Paper 4482: The World Bank. p.4.
38. RDA Toll Revenue Projections Report. 2013
39. Republic of Zambia, Transport Policy, 2002, p.3
40. Republic of Zambia, Transport Policy, 2002, Clause 4.2.1 (c ) (a), p. 23
41. Road Development Agency Tolling Unit.
42. Road Development Agency, Zambia
43. Road Development 2012 – 2016 Core Road Network Needs Report. March 2011
44. RoadSIP II Final Bankable Document, Section 2.7.1. October 2003
45. Sunday Mail, January 19, 2014, Vol. 20 No. 3, p. 3
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47. Tastle, J. William (2005). A New Measure to Analyze Student Performance Using the Likert Scale. Proc ISECON 2005, v22 (Columbus OH): §2142 (refereed)
48. Tembo, Yohane (2010). Master’s Thesis: Transportation Engineering. University of Stellenbosch.
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53. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies (2008). Special Report 295. The Federal Investment in Highway Research (2006 – 2009): Strenghts and Weaknesses. p. 1 & 5.
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55. Trochim, W. M. (2002). The research methods knowledge base (2nd ed.). Retrieved August 16, 2004, from http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/kb/index.htm
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8 APPENDICES

Appendix A: Data and Analysis for Secondary Data

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Figure 8: Condition of Trunk Road T5 Chingola to Solwezi.

Table 23: Estimate of 2012 Upgrading Kilometers

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Source: NRFA Monitoring Reports. 2012

Table 24: Annual Budget Analysis (2006 – 2014)

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Table 25: Status of Resource Mobilization

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Table 26: Comparative Analysis of Unit Rates

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Table 27: Trends in Diesel Pump Prices

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Source of diesel prices: Energy Regulation Board, Zambia

Table 28: Trends in Zambia’s Inflation Rate

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Source: Trading Economics/World Bank

Table 29: Foreign Exchange Rates

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Source: Trading Economics/World Bank /Bank of Zambia

Table 30: Rates Analysis on some Selected Link Zambia 8000 Projects

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Table 31: Rates Analysis on Routine Maintenance Contracts under Lusaka City Council (2013)

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Table 32: Comparative TMDs and Urban Unit Rates for Seals and Asphalt on Running Contracts

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Table 33: Unit Rates Development for Urban Roads on Running Contracts

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Table 34: Unit Rates Development for TMDs on Running Contracts

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Table 35: Rates Analysis on Periodic Maintenance Unpaved Roads (2013)

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Table 36: Rates Analysis on Rehabilitation Unpaved Roads (2013)

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Table 37: Rates Analysis of Upgrading Projects (2012 – 2013)

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Table 38: Worksheet: Current Unit Costs for Asphalt and Surfacing Seals on TMD Roads

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Table 39: Worksheet: Current Unit Costs for Asphalt and Surfacing Seals on Urban Roads

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Table 40: Worksheet: Current Unit Costs for Asphalt and Surfacing Seals on TMD Link Zambia 8000 Roads

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Appendix B: Data and Analysis for Primary Data

Text Box 4: Cover Note Accompanying Questionnaire

Cover Note

From: Yohane Tembo [mailto:Ytembo@nrfa.org.zm]

Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 10:41 AM

To: 'yohane1972@gmail.com'

Subject: Research Questionnaire

Esteemed Compatriot,

I am undertaking a research into what can simply be termed as collapse mechanisms of road asset management in Zambia. The title is: “A Diagnostic Study into Road Financing Paradoxes which have led to Inefficient Road Asset Management in Zambia.” As part of the extended assignment, I have designed a simple questionnaire, attached hereto, in order to collect supplementary primary data in order to blend with other sources of information reasonably available for completion of my assignment. This exercise is being done in partial fulfillment of a doctorate as indicated on the questionnaire.

You have been randomly selected in this survey because you and your organization play a cardinal role in Zambia’s road construction programs, in general, and road asset management, in particular. Kindly assist me by taking 5 minutes of your invaluable time to respond to this questionnaire. If you wish to guarantee complete anonymity, please printout out the form, provide responses, and send driver to deliver to addressee below. The envelope should be clearly marked “Yohane Tembo” and nothing else. Further, you may have noticed that I have sent you this questionnaire in blind copy to enhance your anonymity.

Be rest assured that without your input, my assignment is seriously starved of industry expert opinion, and is rendered handicapped.

I thank you in advance and look forward to receipt of your valued response within seven days. Should you, by any circumstance, fail to meet the deadline, still feel free to send your response. I appreciate your busy schedules; however, kindly forgive me if I have to make a follow up with you.

Warmest regards,

Yohane Tembo, BEng, MEng

Road Engineer

National Road Fund Agency,

Text Box 5: Sample of Questionnaire used to collect Primary Data

QUESTIONNAIRE

Institution: Atlantic International University

Candidate: Yohane Tembo

Field of Study: Doctorate in Transportation Economics

Research Topic: A Diagnostic Study into Road Financing Paradoxes which have led to Inefficient Road Asset

Management in Zambia

Valued respondent, kindly spare your valuable 5 minutes to respond to the following questions by ticking appropriate box:

Respondent Institution:… Years in position for responder:…

1. Your knowledge of Zambia’s transport policy

[ ] very high [ ] high [ ] average [ ] low [ ] very low

2. Your role in road sector Annual Work Plans

[ ] very high [ ] high [ ] average [ ] low [ ] very low

3. You use scientific budgeting processes and needs assessment tools

[ ] yes [ ] no

4. Pavement Management System/Road Management System is used to assess roads needs

[ ] yes [ ] no

5. Your budgets are in line with 6th National Development Plan

[ ] strongly agree [ ] agree [ ] neutral [ ] disagree [ ] strongly disagree

6. The 6th National Development Plan is linked to National Budgeting Process

[ ] strongly agree [ ] agree [ ] neutral [ ] disagree [ ] strongly disagree

7. Resources for road sector programs match the needs

[ ] strongly agree [ ] agree [ ] neutral [ ] disagree [ ] strongly disagree

8. The 6th National Development Plan will clear the backlog of maintenance in Zambia by 2016

[ ] yes [ ] no

9. The resources to clear backlog of maintenance are known

[ ] yes [ ] no

10. State total needs to 2016:…..

11. State total resources to 2016:

12. Private finance initiative has a role to play in Zambia’s road sector

[ ] very high [ ] high [ ] average [ ] low [ ] very low

13. Your knowledge of road asset management principles

[ ] very high [ ] high [ ] average [ ] low [ ] very low

14. Road asset management principles are applied in Zambia

[ ] strongly agree [ ] agree [ ] neutral [ ] disagree [ ] strongly disagree

15. Road asset management is a priority of the Zambian government

[ ] strongly agree [ ] agree [ ] neutral [ ] disagree [ ] strongly disagree

16. Legal framework in place prioritizing road asset management in Zambia

[ ] yes [ ] no

If yes, please state Act:

17. Optimized road network cardinal for efficient asset management

[ ] strongly agree [ ] agree [ ] neutral [ ] disagree [ ] strongly disagree

18. Upgrading gravel roads to bituminous standard to continue in face of maintenance challenge

[ ] strongly agree [ ] agree [ ] neutral [ ] disagree [ ] strongly disagree

19. The road sector needs must be confined to available financial resources

[ ] strongly agree [ ] agree [ ] neutral [ ] disagree [ ] strongly disagree

Thank you for your great support, participation, and timely response.

Table 41: Raw Data: Category 1 and 2 Questions

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Table 42: Raw Data: Category 3 and 4 Questions

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Table 43: Analysis of Category 1 Questions

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Table 44: Analysis of Category 2 Questions

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Table 45: Analysis of Category 3 Questions

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Table 46: Analysis of Category 4 Questions

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Table 47: Weighted Mean for Category 1 and 2 Questions

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Table 48: Weighted Mean for Category 3 and 4 Questions

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[...]

^[1] Raballand, Gaël et al. (2008). The Impact of Regional Liberalization and Harmonization in Road Transport Services: A Focus on Zambia and Lessons for Landlocked Countries. p. 4.

^[2] Republic of Zambia, Transport Policy, 2002, p.3

^[3] Road Development Agency, Zambia

^[4] TAZARA stands for Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority

^[5] Candidate Support Pack. Higher National Diploma in Management, Management Research (DV81_36). Scottish Qualifications Authority. January 2009. p. 42.

^[6] Eberts, R (2010). Understanding the Impact of Transportation on Economic Development. Joint Transport Research Centre (2010).

^[7] The Future of Interurban Passenger Transport, Bringing Citizens Closer Together. 18th International Transport Symposium held in Madrid, 2009.

^[8] Harvey, J. and Jowsey E. (2007). Modern Economics. 8th Edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 235-236.

^[9] Wales, Joseph & Wild, Leni (2012). The political economy of roads, An overview and analysis of existing literature.

^[10] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle. Accessed July 22, 2013.

^[11] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle. Accessed July 22, 2013.

^[12] http://www.whatcar.com/car-news/number-of-cars-on-uk-roads-increases/219239/. Accessed July 26, 2013

^[13] http://www.info.gov.za/aboutsa/transport.htm. Accessed July 22, 2013.

^[14] http://www.zinara.co.zw/index.php? Accessed July 23, 2013

^[15] Litman, Todd (2013). Evaluating Public Transit Benefits and Costs: Best Practices Guidebook. Victoria Transport Policy Institute, p.2.

^[16] Zambia Transport Policy, 2002; p. 19

^[17] RoadSIP II Bankable Document, 2003; p. 1

^[18] Public Roads Act No. 12 of 2002, Section 11(2).

^[19] National Road Fund Agency Act No. 13 of 2002, Section 4(1)

^[20] Gwilliam, Ken et al. (2008). Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic, Roads in Sub-Saharan Africa. Summary of Background Paper 14.

^[21] Raballand, Gaël & Whitworth, Alan (2012). The Crisis in The Zambian Road Sector. ZIPAR Working Paper No. 5. pp 12-14

^[22] Addo-Abedi, F. Y., Ellevset, O. E. and Benmaamar, M. (2008). Status of Road Sub-Sector Reforms in Sub-Sahara Africa.

^[23] Zambia Transport Policy, 2002, p. 24

^[24] RoadSIP II Bankable Document, 2003

^[25] Harral, Clell et al. (2011). Maintaining Road Assets: A Fresh Look at The World Bank’s 1988 Policy Paper “Road Deterioration In Developing Countries ”; p. viii

^[26] Zimmerman, A. K., & Yurek, R. (2012). Best Practices in Highway Maintenance Performance Measuring. Transportation Research Circular E-C163-MM, July 2012. Presentations from AASHTO - TRB Maintenance Management Conference. p. 75

^[27] IRI stands for International Roughness Index, measured in mm/km

^[28] World Bank

^[29] Road Development Agency

^[30] Saturday Post Online, Thursday September 20, 2012. Retrievd from http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=28959. Accessed January 11, 2014.

^[31] Brue, L. S. and Mcconnell R. C. (2007). Essentials of Economics. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Edition. pp. 325-333

^[32] Lusaka Times, December 9, 2013. http://www.lusakatimes.com/ accessed December 9, 2013. Pinard, I. Michael (2012).

^[33] Progress on Commercialized Road Management in Sub-Saharan Africa. Working Paper No. 92. Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program. P. 87

^[34] Banjo, George, et al. (2012). Rural Transport, Improving its Contribution to Growth and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. Working Paper No. 93. SSATP. pp. 56-57

^[35] Transportation Research Board of the National Academies (2008). Special Report 295. The Federal Investment in Highway Research (2006 – 2009): Strenghts and Weaknesses. p. 1.

^[36] GRZ stands for Government Republic of Zambia

^[37] National Road Fund Agency, Annual Report 2012, p. 30

^[38] http://www.property24.com/articles/r18bn-zimbabwe%E2%80%993-new-road-toll-plazas/17491. accessed January 11, 2014

^[39] Daily Nation, Wednesday September 25, 2013, Vol. 3, Issue 573. p.1

^[40] Times of Zambia, Monday September 30, 2013; No. 15,784, p. 7

^[41] Tembo, Yohane (2010). Master’s Thesis: Transportation Engineering. University of Stellenbosch; p. 13.

^[42] RDA Tolling Unit.

^[43] Using an exchange rate of USD1.00 to ZMW5.5 as at December 31, 2013

^[44] RDA 2013 Toll Revenue Projections Report

^[45] Aurecon Report: Feasibility Study for Tolling of Selected Roads/Road Links and Bridges in Zambia. February 2011; p. 169

^[46] ZACCI Policy Brief on SI 73 of 2013 (The Tolls Regulations). Vol. 1, No. 1, 2013; p.2

^[47] Transportation Research Board of the National Academies (2008). Special Report 295. The Federal Investment in Highway Research (2006 – 2009): Strenghts and Weaknesses. p. 5.

^[48] RoadSIP II Final Bankable Document, Section 2.7.1. October 2003

^[49] Gananadha, N. (2001). Case Study: The Zambian Experience of a Road Fund, Rural Transport Knowledge Base, Rural Travel and Transport Program.

^[50] Heggie, I. G (1999). Second Generation Road Funds: Emerging "Good" Practice.

^[51] Times of Zambia, Thursday, December 12, 2013, Issue No. 15,841; p. 3

^[52] http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=41601. Dated Thursday, December 5, 2013. Accessed December 12, 2013.

^[53] http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=12934. Published on August 21, 2010. Accessed January 14, 2014

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Details

Titel: A Diagnostic Study into Road Financing Paradoxes which have led to Inefficient Road Asset Management in Zambia
Hochschule: ( Atlantic International University )
Veranstaltung: Transportation Economics
Autor: Yohane Tembo (Autor:in)
Erscheinungsjahr: 2014
Seiten: 119
Katalognummer: V282232
ISBN (eBook): 9783656766780
ISBN (Buch): 9783656856733
Sprache: Englisch
Schlagworte: diagnostic study road financing paradoxes inefficient asset management zambia

Arbeit zitieren: Yohane Tembo (Autor:in), 2014, A Diagnostic Study into Road Financing Paradoxes which have led to Inefficient Road Asset Management in Zambia, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/282232

A Diagnostic Study into Road Financing Paradoxes which have led to Inefficient Road Asset Management in Zambia

Leseprobe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF TEXT BOXES

LIST OF FIGURES

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

DECLARATION

ABSTRACT

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Problem statement

1.3 Aims and objectives

1.4 Scope of the study

1.5 Significance of the study

2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Analysis of the Project Title

2.3 The Economic Question of Road Investments

2.4 Legal and Institutional Framework

2.5 Maintenance Philosophies

2.6 Resource Mobilization

3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Theoretical Background

3.3 Presentation of the Methodology

3.3.1 Choice of Variables

3.3.2 Hypothesis

3.3.3 Data Collection

3.3.4 Analysis

3.3.5 Validation

4 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

4.1 Introduction

4.2 The Process

4.3 Results from Analysis of Secondary Data

4.4 Results from Analysis of Primary Data

4.5 Analysis

5 CONCLUSION

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Main Conclusions

5.3 Summary

6 RECOMMENDATIONS

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Recommendations

7 BIBLIOGRAPHY

8 APPENDICES

Appendix A: Data and Analysis for Secondary Data

Appendix B: Data and Analysis for Primary Data

Details