EAC to save US$1bn annually through harmonised axle law

The overall savings in the five-member East African Community (EAC) bloc as a result of a harmonised axle load control could exceed 1 billion U.S. dollars annually, officials said.EAC Deputy Secretary General, Dr. Enos Bukuku, told journalists in Nairobi that a harmonised law will significantly reduce transport costs, especially for Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, which are landlocked. “By harmonising the approach to axle load control to allow for maximum of 56 tonnes per truck across the region, we shall remove costly logistics burden from the back of operators and investors in the region and save the region over one billion dollars annually,” Bukuku said during a regional conference on the development of the EAC vehicle load Control Bill.The Bill, titled the EAC Vehicle Load Control Bill, 2012, is the culmination of a year-long process during which Partner States discussed technical details on vehicle loading. A study funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) recommended that the region adopts harmonised load limits, decriminalises overloading and develops state of the art weighbridge stations. The study was discussed at several experts and stakeholders’ workshops and eventually was adopted by a committee of Permanent Secretaries in August 2011.The highlight among the items discussed and agreed was the adoption of a 56-tonne gross vehicle weight limit within the region. This also conforms to the COMESA and SADC limits, thus bringing the whole Eastern and Southern Africa region into a harmonised vehicle load regime. The taskforce was established to harmonise the different axle load regimes in the trading bloc as Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi currently allow for a maximum of 56 tonnes per truck while Uganda permits up to 53 tonnes and Kenya only allows 48 tonnes.Bukuku said that given the importance of the bill, the Secretariat will fast track the enactment of the law. “We hope to finalise the technical draft and submit it to the East African Assembly by April so that the legislators can enact it into law by June by end of their term,” he said. “This is not a political issue to deliberate at length because once engineers agree on the technical aspects all parties should find consensus”. The deputy secretary general said that the cry of transporters, consumers and producers in the region, is that the law should be fast tracked to enable efficient and transparent operations of transit transport in order to bring down the current high transport costs that stifle investments, industrialisation and the region’s international trade. “The governments will also benefit from the improved regional axle load control oversight procedures through the adoption unified weight bridges,” he noted.The Director of Infrastructure at the EAC Philip Wambugu said that proposed law will cap the maximum length of any vehicle used for transport in the region at 22 meters and allow only a maximum of seven axles per vehicle. Uganda’s Ministry of East African Community Affairs Principal Infrastructure Officer, Gabriel Atama, said the EAC is currently facing 45 non tariff barriers (NTBs) with about eight to ten being transport related. “If we solve the axle load issue, we will have eliminated a big fraction of the transport related NTBs in order to propel the region’s development agenda,” Atama said. Kenya’s Ministry of EAC Senior Assistant Director, Irene Musebe, said Kenya is optimistic that the state of roads will not deteriorate even after the new law takes effect. “Currently, we permit a transporter to use a vehicle with maximum of 48 tonnes on six axles, while the new law will permit a vehicle with 56 tonnes on seven axles so the load per axle will remain unchanged,” Musebe, who is also the Chairperson of the Task force said.She said that the additional payload to be realized by Kenya truckers will benefit the local economy. She added that the process has been very inclusive as the bills have received a huge input from experts of the partner states. It is expected that the implementation of the law will greatly reduce congestion at weighbridge stations and eliminate bribery since all transactions will be ICT based and all weighing stations will be linked electronically to a central data processing station.

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EAC to save US$1bn annually through harmonised axle law