RMI Update No.4 - June 2002

 

  SSATP Conference
  New Publications
  Workshops
  Recent Missions of RMI staff
     

 

 

SSATP Conference

The SSATP Annual Component Meetings and Stakeholders' Workshop is quickly approaching. Official invitations were sent to coordinators and other invitees on April 18, 2002. The draft RMI/RTTP meeting agenda (English and French), the concept note (English and French), as well as the reporting format (English and French) is available. A CD-ROM Toolkit which includes RMI models such as the RED Model and Road User Charges Model, various RMI working and discussion papers, technical notes, RMI presentations, and a sample bidding document, will be available for dissemination at the conference. In addition, the following CD-ROMs will be available at the conference, the SSATP Publications 2002, SOURCE, Tariff, and Traffic. For additional information about the CD-ROMs, please contact mdesthuis@worldbank.org or telephone 1-202- 458-5953. For additional information about the conference, please contact sbrushett@worldbank.org or telephone 1-202-473-4153.

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New Publications

We are pleased to advise that the following publications are available:

  • Road Management Initiative Brochure - The brochure is available in English, French and Portuguese and can be viewed or downloaded from the RMI homepage at: http://www.worldbank.org/afr/ssatp/rmi.htm or available upon request in hard copy addressed to: ssatp@worldbank.org
  • A Review of Road Sector Reforms in Tanzania (Discussion Paper No. 2) - The discussion paper reviews the empirical evidence with the road fund and road agency in Tanzania and makes recommendations to strengthen the impact of the reform program. This paper can be downloaded from the RMI publication page at: http://www.worldbank.org/afr/ssatp/rmipubs.htm or available upon request in hard copy addressed to: ssatp@worldbank.org

Note: RMI will have a limited number of its publications available in Portuguese for the Maputo Meeting.

If you have any questions, please contact mdesthuis@worldbank.org or telephone 1-202- 458-5953.

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Workshops

Transport Forum

This years' Transport Forum was held April 4-5, 2002 at the World Bank in Washington, DC. The theme for the forum was "Learning from Each Other". The forum presented an opportunity for internal staff discussion on improving program goals and assessing progress on meeting those goals. The link is included in this update as we believe the subject matter of the papers presented may be of broad interest to the RMI partnership. Papers were presented on the following major topics:

  • Programmatic Operations in Transport
  • Delivering Transport Services Better
  • Improving the Climate for Investment and Growth
  • Working Across Sectors

Papers presented during the forum can be downloaded at: http://www.worldbank.org/transport/forum2002/program.htm

Kenyan Roads Board Policy Workshop

The SSATP Program Manager, Nigel Ings, participated in a mission in Nairobi, at the end of May 2002. The purpose of the mission was to participate in the Kenyan Roads Board (KRB) policy workshop and assess its contribution to the Bank-lead road sector review. The SSATP responded to a request from the KRB to support in preparing and facilitating the roads sector stakeholders' policy workshop - Thor Wetteland (RMI Consultant) was engaged to be an active participant in the process, and the SSATP also funded workshop facilitation services. Observers were invited to attend form Tanzania and Uganda. The workshop was held to identify a sub-sector strategy to mobilize rehabilitation and maintenance of roads in Kenya. Attendees participated in breakout groups to consider policy objective issues and options in three main categories - financial issues, institutional arrangements, and private sector engagement. A small ad-hoc steering group considered group outputs and consolidated them into a proposition. A significant feature of the outputs was the re-emergence of a main roads agency/authority approach alongside the concept of a national rural transport/roads agency/authority. Such an agency or authority would perhaps promote coherent approaches to policy implementation, coordinate and act as a reservoir or procurer of capacity building resources, and act as the sole rural transport and infrastructure service providing agency for managing funds allocated by the KRB. The workshop established a platform to build a strategy development process. Outputs from the workshop included agreement that the KRB should immediately engage in a participatory process leading to the production of a road sector strategy document for submission to government by the end of 2002. The workshop established a platform to build the strategy development process, including identification of the needs of the KRB for specialist support.

For further information, please contact: tlarsen1@worldbank.org

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Recent Missions of RMI Staff

Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire

An RMI team member, Nicolas Gohel, participated in two road sector reform reviews, one in Guinea May 20-27 and the second in Cote d'Ivoire May 28 - June 3, 2002. The work essentially involved completing for both countries: update of the implementation of RMI concepts, testing of the new performance assessment tool developed by RMI. The review in Guinea was led by the Guinea RMI coordinator, Dr. Ahmadou Gueye; while the review in Côte d'Ivoire was conducted with the help of RTTP coordinator Mr. Marcel Konan (Côte d'Ivoire is not currently an RMI member country) The RTTP regional coordinator for West Africa, Mr. Siele Silue, participated in the work to reinforce the importance of the exercise for RTTP clients. The review in both countries consisted of administering a questionnaire to private and public sector stakeholders to assess RMI inspired road sector reform concepts. In Guinea, several private and public sector stakeholders such as union representatives and directors completed the questionnaire. In Côte d'Ivoire, the questionnaire was answered only by the government agency. The second part of the review included collecting data to conduct the economic evaluation of road investment options as well as to prepare an assessment of maintenance requirements and assess the funding gap.

These pilot exercises will be among six to be presented at the forthcoming RMI annual coordinating committee meeting in Maputo, Mozambique. The intention is to adopt a common methodology and timeframe for completing the stakeholder survey and the performance assessment in all RMI member countries before the end of 2002.

For further information on the reviews, please contact: ngohel@worldbank.org

Rwanda

A team from RMI (Thor Wetteland) and RTTP (George Banjo) joined with the responsible Bank staff (Kingson Apara) in a mission with senior staff from the Ministry of Public Works, Transport, and Communications and officials from the Road Maintenance Fund in Kigali, Rwanda. This was a first joint mission of RMI and RTTP to emphasize the common interest of the two components in promoting a coherent transport strategy with a poverty reduction focus in Rwanda. Minister Kanamugire, delivered a clear message as to the government's commitment to the development of an overall transport sector strategy. The team used the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the government's "Vision 2020" document to identify sector-wide policy goals that provide the framework for specific priority objectives across the range of sub-sectoral components. The government's "Vision 2020" document delineates long term developmental goals which provide a clear framework for defining transport contributions to the PRSP.

For further information, please contact: sbrushett@worldbank.org

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