A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region

A Review of Highway Agencies in the South Asia Region
Executive Summary
Preamble
Explosive growth in demand for passenger and freight transport in the South Asia region,
driven by high economic growth, has put the spotlight squarely on ensuring enhanced
delivery of infrastructure and services. Accordingly, many South Asian governments plan
to increase investments manifold and have launched large infrastructure development
programs. Apart from mobilizing financial resources, a major challenge they face is the
capacity constraints of their implementing agencies in ensuring timely and cost effective
implementation of these programs. The road sector is a priority for all South Asian
governments and highways agencies also face similar capacity constraints. It is, therefore,
imperative to assess capacity and performance of the highway agencies, so that policy
reforms and large investment programs can accordingly be planned by the policy makers
and development partners in the region. This assessment is also critical to identify the
appetite of these agencies towards the reforms needed for the successful and sustainable
implementation of the programs.
There is also a need to find innovative ways to reform these road agencies and perhaps
revisit their institutional structure and functions in the longer run.
The Study: Objective, Scope and Methodology
The objective of the study is to help governments and policy makers in identifying reforms
that are required to modernize and strengthen the capacity and performance of their road
agencies to deliver large investment programs through performance monitoring as a tool. A
review of the highway agencies in the region has been undertaken to suggest: (i) indicators
to assess their capacities and performance; and (ii) a roadmap to improve performance in
key functional areas of the agencies.
The scope of study included a review of a sample of highway agencies from Bangladesh,
India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. This sample included national and provincial level
highway agencies as well as road corporations. In India, the focus was on the state-level
highway agencies. This study also incorporates findings from earlier studies commissioned
by the World Bank.
The methodology covered the following five steps:
Step 1: Literature Review
The literature review provided the framework for the analysis in this study; the World Road
Association (PIARC) framework was used to this end. The framework incorporates two
dimensions: the organizational type of the highway agency and the stage of development
of the road network, that is, birth, growth, upgrading, and maturity covering separation of
client and producer organizations and their corporatization.
Step 2: Data Collection
Data collection was focused on the information that could help to assess the current
capacity and performance of highway agencies as well as to understand the operating
environment and challenges faced by them. As part of this phase, in-depth face-to-face
interviews were also conducted with some of the highway agencies to gain a better
understanding of their functioning and performance.
Step 3: Review of International Good Practices
Highway agencies in South Africa, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia were reviewed.
These countries have, in the course of their development, faced challenges similar to those
being faced by the highway agencies in the South Asia region currently. These agencies have
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