An Empirical Study Of Transit Transport Corridors Efficiency Of Landlocked African Countries

Landlocked economies have been attracted wide attention around the globe.Nearly a third of the African countries are landlocked.Trade costs in landlocked African countries(LLACs)are generally higher than for transit countries and constitute a serious impediment to trade and economic growth.For one thing,the lack of territorial access to the sea,aggravated by the prohibitive transport costs associated with conditions of inadequate and poor infrastructure,poses serious constraints on economic development of LLACs.On the other hand,their dependence on transit neighbors' transport system and administrative procedures to transfer their goods to and from port,result in higher costs on trade,cumbersome customs procedures;unwarranted roadblocks and generally inefficient movement of goods across borders and thus limiting the ability of LLACs to compete in global markets.Thus,it is of great significance to identify best practice in achieving efficient transit transport systems to and from LLACs in order to address the specific problems faced by landlocked emerging economies and improve trade and transport in corridors.Currently,a large number of studies have revealed the importance of transit transport system and trade costs for LLACs.However,knowledge gap still exist.Although enclosure problem has been discussed in existing studies in Africa,a comparative analysis of transit transport corridors efficiency of LLACs has not been done yet.There is scare literature on the efficiency and performance of their transport system in terms of inland transport infrastructure,customs and trade facilitation,cross-border cooperation,port and terminal handling in transit countries.In view of the above problems,this study is based on internationally released databases(i.e.UN Comtrade database,World Bank Doing business database,socio-economic survey data,).At regional scale,a comparative analysis was conducted to demonstrate the cost of being landlocked.At country level,Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA)was used to evaluate the relative performance of the transit transport system of LLACs and identify the best performing corridor and find solutions to transact trade efficiently.The results are as follows:(1)Based on the socio-economic survey database,this study offers a diagnostic summary of the current situation in LLACs.It takes a closer look at the dependence of landlocked countries on transit countries and evaluates the impact of transit policy on transport costs and services.The cost of being landlocked has been analysis based on the inland transport interface(waiting time,documents and costs to import)and the logistics performance indicators.(2)It is difficult to quantify and rank the transport system by using various traditional statistical models.Based on the World Bank doing business database,this study undertakes a comparative performance efficiency analysis of transit transport system for LLACs corridors.Three different types of DEA models were proposed and used to measure the relative efficiencies of transit transport using a six year data(2008-2013)of some selected LLACs.The results obtained from the study show that,the average pure technical and scale efficiency scores are situated at 90.89 and 37.13%respectively.Two units(13.33%)are technical efficient(technical and scale efficiency)while,four units(26.66%)are only pure technical efficient over the observed period.Swaziland being the most efficient corridor while,Central African Republic corridor was the least efficient throughout the monitored years.The results of the study indicate the relevance of minimizing trade costs to stimulate landlocked countries exports.(3)From global transport change perspective,we further identified specific problems that affect utilization,development and maintenance of transit transport infrastructure in the region and discussed possible options for more efficient use of transport infrastructure in both the landlocked and transit countries in Africa.Simplification and harmonization of customs and administrative documentation and procedures which can be attained with modest investment can achieve immediate benefits in terms of improving transit times and reducing transit transport costs.In summary,geographical remoteness from the sea and dependence on the transport systems in neighboring and/or coastal countries together contributes to higher trade and transport costs for LLACs in a coupled way.Strategies of transit transport corridors management deserve much attention to achieve win-win goals for both landlocked and transit countries' transport improvement in the context of economic development.