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FREIGHT LOGISTICS ROADMAP: CABINET-APPROVED BUT WHICH VERSION?
- 12 December 2023
- Transport
- SA Legal Academy
A media statement on Cabinet’s 8 December 2023 meeting includes confirmation of its decision to approve a ‘freight logistics roadmap’ for publication. At the time of writing, however, it was not yet clear if the statement refers to the roadmap’s seventh draft or a later iteration.
Marked ‘confidential draft for discussion’ and posted on the Department of Transport’s website well before the Cabinet meeting, the roadmap’s seventh draft incudes an executive summary in which its genesis is attributed to an announcement in the 2023 State of the Nation Address (SONA).
In fact, the SONA’s official version refers to work already in progress on a ‘Transnet roadmap’ intended to ‘translate … policy commitments into reality’. At the time, the roadmap was expected to include ‘restructuring’ Transnet freight rail ‘to create a separate infrastructure manager for the rail network by October 2023’.
According to the Cabinet media statement announcing the roadmap’s approval (among other things), its ‘immediate priority’ is to ‘stabilise and improve the operational performance of the freight rail network’ across five corridors. In that context, the statement refers to ‘three areas of intervention to improve rail performance’:
- ‘operations and rolling stock’ (including returning ‘long-standing locomotives’ to service ‘through agreements with original equipment manufacturers to ensure a supply of spares, or through the appointment of a step-in original equipment manufacturer’)
- rail network security and safety (including ‘collaboration with law enforcement agencies’), and
- a ‘capital investment programme’ for ‘expansion plans’ and operational sustainability.
Longer-term imperatives will focus on:
- implementing ‘national rail policy’ and ‘national commercial ports policy’ commitments, and
- ‘plans’ for broader freight logistics system reform.
Presumably, the statement is referring to the 2022 White Paper on rail transport and the 2002 ports policy (on the Government Gazette cover of which, 21 years ago, then Public Enterprises Minister Jeff Radebe is quoted as having remarked that ‘the economic impact of Durban’s inefficiencies need urgent attention’).
The statement also refers to a draft ‘framework’ intended to ‘enable private sector participation in the railway infrastructure system’ – through opportunities initially focusing on ‘fixing’ it. Is this a draft to be released for public comment, or a final framework ready for publication? Whatever the case, at the time of writing it was not yet available.
- seventh draft roadmap
- Cabinet media statement
- 2022 national rail policy White Paper
- 2002 ports policy
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch