South Africa is calling an emergency meeting of the state-owned rail corporation and its major customers to investigate and find solutions for logjams undermining exports and food relief deliveries in the region.
Fresh produce and agriculture exporters have complained to the government that they are losing export business because the transport network, principally the state’s Spoornet rail-freight network, cannot get their goods to port quickly enough and cannot load them efficiently.
”Several customers have complained about inordinate delays when using Spoornet services. Clearly, this is of concern to us,” Public Enterprises Minister Jeff Radebe told a news conference. Talks would take place within two weeks, he said.
Many users have shifted their business onto the country’s roads, which are amongst the best in Africa, but are being battered by increasing usage.
Radebe said the government already had approved a medium-term 10 billion rand programme to meet a shortage of freight wagons.
But complaints, mainly from existing or potential exporters, had led him to call for a meeting within the next two weeks with Spoornet and key rail users ”to devise an action plan that will address these concerns”.
Public Enterprises Director General Sivi Gounden said the meeting would also address the need to ship thousands of tonnes of emergency food relief through South Africa to neighbouring countries, where up to 13 million people face starvation over the next six months.
”This will be discussed in the context of the wagons that are needed for food relief. We would hope to achieve a balance between this need and the needs of exporters,” he said.
Radebe said the state-owned Transnet group, which includes Spoornet, would spend 45.8 billion rand on infrastructure over the next seven years, starting with 9.1 billion rand in 2003.
He said he expected Transnet to fund the programme out of savings and direct borrowing without government involvement.
He said the reduction of the Transnet Pension Fund deficit from 15 billion rand 18 months ago to four billion rand now had reduced the 1.5 billion rand annual bill for debt servicing, but he gave no further details on the funding programme.
”The improvement of our rolling stock and locomotive capacity in particular has been a priority for some time,” he said, adding that the regional food crisis had thrown a spotlight on the issue.
”Dealing with such a natural disaster would stretch the resources of any well-resourced country, and we will need to pool all our efforts to ensure that the process runs as smoothly as possible,” he said.
Radebe said Spoornet planned also to expand facilities for the repair and maintenance of locomotives and rolling stock leased to other southern African countries. – Reuters