Upgrading road transport to 
accelerate economic 
growth

By Chaudhry Kamran Naseer

An efficient road network plays a crucial role in any country’s economic progress and growth. It expands trade and business opportunities for a state by providing access to far flung, distant areas within a country. It helps in reducing the cost of transportation for carrying raw materials and finished commodities, which results in efficient production and distribution of products. It also attracts national and multinational investors as they have easy access to industrial zones. Further, a smooth road network would increase the economic value of land and provide transport to the poor people who have limited mobility because of geographic isolation and the high cost of transport. Overall, a good road network is the key infrastructure needed to accelerate socioeconomic development, improve quality of life, create jobs and provide access to social services.

Road transport sector helps to bring together the supply and demand sides of an economy, which increases competition  that leads to price stability and prevents formation of monopolies in the market. Therefore, advanced road network and efficient road transport are pre requisites to sustain economic growth. The value added by road transport sector is estimated to account for 3 to 5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on a global scale.

In context of the developing countries, road transport becomes even more substantial as due to low income levels, diminutive travelling opportunities, under developed areas and a serrated transport infrastructure, mostly people avail this facility of road transport to perform different socio-economic activities. Pakistan’s transport system is primarily dependent on road transport, which makes up 90 per cent of national passenger traffic and around 96 per cent of freight movement. But unfortunately due to low road density and lane capacity, depressed quality of roads, lower level of maintenance owing to unskilled labour, high cost and poor quality of transport services because of less public-private partnerships, shortage of transport especially in rural areas, the road transport sector has not been able to keep pace with the rising demands of today’s modern world. This has put severe constrains on the national economic activities by increasing the cost of doing business in Pakistan which results in expensive industrial products, thereby repelling investors and reducing the exports.

Development of our country’s road network remained very slow in the past. According to the economic survey of Pakistan, roads (both high and low types) which were 229,595 km in 1996-97, increased to 264,853 km only by 2007-08 with a continuous decreasing percentage change in length from 5.2 in 1996-97 to 1.2 in 2007-08. As a result, the value of road density, which is a common indicator for the development of a country’s road system, is only 0.32 km / km2. This is very low as compared to other South Asian countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. Low road density retards the ability to move freely goods and people and acts as a barrier to trade.

Not only is the road network in Pakistan poor, but most of the roads are not even paved. Out of the total road network of the whole country, only 60 per cent is paved. The 10,849 km long national highway and motorway network carries approximately 80 per cent of Pakistan's total traffic. The national highway network basically consists of low capacity roads. About 75 per cent of national highway roads are 2-lane. Due to low lane capacity and poor quality of roads, speed of raw materials’ carriers (truck, containers etc) and passenger buses remain at 40 to 50km per hour only and the entire journey takes 3 to 4 times longer than that in developed countries.

Poor quality of transport is provided at high fares with uncomfortable seating arrangements for the large number of passengers. Violation of safety rules, driving without a license is common that causes road accidents and leads to increase in the fatality rate. During holidays when the burden of passengers increase, transporters raise the fare rates to double digits even, which further puts an additional burden on the already suffering population. This also reduces people’s savings and adversely affects their working abilities.

Although, privatisation of road transport is a wide trend in different countries but the focus should always remain on providing the best level of facilities to the general public, which is thoroughly ignored in our country.

A standardised and balanced allocation of resources, depending on the dispersion of population is considered a prerequisite to acquire the economy to grow constantly. In provision of transport and road network facilities, this directive is being badly violated in rural areas of Pakistan where most of the population resides. People have no or poor access to roads and transport which isolates a majority of population from the economic mainstream. This leads to a greater incidence of poverty among the rural population and creates a bigger obstacle in aligning the rural community with the urban one that results in failure of achieving the desired goals of development.

Road transport has positive effects on the economy as this sector supports a large number of other economic activities like car manufacturing, road maintenance, petrol industry, road industries, highways operators, road haulers, public services, etc. In the short term, the planning, construction, operation and maintenance of the road transport system helps to create jobs with direct implications on the economic prosperity of people. In the long run, road networks have an influence on basic production factors which in turn, will foster economic development. Conclusively, investment in the road transport infrastructure has large socio-economic impacts.

Therefore, major improvements in road network and transport systems like construction of new roads with high lane capacity, better level of maintenance of depressed roads, specialisation in road engineering and increase in public-private partnerships to create a competitive environment for provision of comfortable and safe transport at each route especially in rural areas, are required to accelerate and sustain the country's continued economic growth.