A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region

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A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region Box 2.6: e-Procurement Several highway agencies in South Asia have implemented e-procurement for a variety of tenders issued by them, including consultancy services and maintenance activities. Highway agencies that have implemented e-procurement include those in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka in India and Nepal. The use of online procurement systems increases the transparency of interaction between the public and private sectors. A well-designed system will also contribute to the efficiency of procurement. Box 2.7: Nepal Roads Board – Managing a Second-Generation Road Fund As a first in South Asia, Nepal established an autonomous RBN in 2002. The Nepalese fund is a so-called secondgeneration road fund, sourced from user fees and controlled by an independent board comprised of mostly private sector representatives. Some characteristics of the Nepalese fund are: Established by the Roads Board Act of 2058 (2002 in the Western calendar); The Nepalese fund is sourced from: A fuel levy on diesel and petrol for vehicles, received through the Ministry of Finance, Road user taxes (toll charges), received directly, A vehicle registration fee, received through the Ministry of Finance; Resources are firstly allocated to routine, recurrent, periodic and emergency repair and maintenance of roads. Secondly, funds can be allocated to rehabilitation, reconstruction and upgrading of roads; and In 2009-10, about US$5.5 million of funds were disbursed, about 60 percent of the budget allocation to RBN. The Board publishes its financial statements annually. However, it has not yet delivered on the promise it was set up to fulfill. Two main causes are acknowledged. On the one hand, there are barriers to generating adequate resources. On the other hand, RBN suffers from inefficiencies in its operations. Nonetheless, the Nepal example shows it is possible to establish a user-charge road fund with an independent board in a region where most road funds are still first generation funds. 2.7 In Conclusion: Current Performance South Asia in General That developments in the road sector are still driven by ad hoc decision-making and lack of long-term plans and/or a vision is highly apparent. Organizational priorities are often implicit and not laid down in formal policies or business plans. Additionally, even if a formal policy has been formulated, it is not necessarily applied in practice. Existing priorities for highway agencies are, in the first place, aimed at improving and maintaining connectivity between main urban centers and cities, and secondly at improving or maintaining connectivity in/to rural areas. Moving away from Sole Implementation Focus In terms of focusing on service provision, there are considerable differences between national and regional highway agencies. The former, in particular, have taken more steps to move away from the traditional ‘public works’ mindset of the infrastructure owner approach to a more service-oriented approach. The core strength of traditional highway agencies has been technical/engineering aspects of road construction and maintenance. Other considerations, for example, improved service provision, traffic and asset management, safety, and so on, are secondary. Associated issues which are economic in nature, however, are not a part of the mindset of the traditional highway agencies. The establishment of road development authorities has been helping to change this traditional mindset to some extent. 44
A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region Structural Collection of Data is Still Limited Only 50 percent of the highway agencies indicated that they regularly collect and maintain a repository of traffic data. Given this lack of data, it is not possible to assess the performance of individual highways or network as a whole. Often, this information is only collected when a road is proposed to be upgraded, especially in the case of RDCs and authorities. For projects undertaken with assistance from multilateral or bilateral financing agencies, motivation and arrangements to improve performance are stronger. Such programs often contain specific conditions and resources for, for example, institutional strengthening and user involvement. In a few cases, special units or organizations have been set up to implement projects financed by IFIs. Better Performance through Monitoring is Far Away South Asian highway agencies are not yet completely ready to monitor their capacity and performance due to lack of available information and data. 2.8 Challenges Facing Highway Agencies Almost all the highway agencies that participated in the study indicated that an important development was the increasing involvement of private contractors in the construction and maintenance of roads, for example, through PPPs (Figure 2.19). In addition, 62 percent of the respondents indicated that there was increasing consolidation of roles and responsibilities into a single road (highway) agency structure instead of fragmented institutional arrangements for the management and development of the road network. Approximately 250 respondents also indicated that the public demand for improved services would increasingly exert pressure on the road agencies to enhance overall accountability and discharge their responsibilities more efficiently and effectively. Figure 2.19: Perceived current transitions for highway agency 100% Contractors under public management 56% Less central/national government 62% Centralization to Road Agency 23% More public performance 45 20% More central/national government 8% 8% Contractors not under public management Decentralization to lower government
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Transport Division Transport, Water
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A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region

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