 The causes of high intra-regional road freight rates for food and commodities in Southern AfricaThando S Vilakazi Development Southern Africa, 2018, vol. 35, issue 3, 388-403 Abstract: This paper focuses on key areas for reducing transport costs in Southern Africa emerging from recent research on cross-border freight between Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We consider the impact of competition, border delays and lack of return loads on transport rates which could be reduced significantly through increased availability of return loads for transporters, linked to growing industrial capacity in each country. Furthermore, increased competition and reducing delays for transporters contributed to a large reduction in transport rates between Lusaka and Johannesburg, with similar effects from Malawi. Margins charged in refrigerated transport are high due to low levels of rivalry and lack of return loads. Measures to reduce border constraints and enable greater rivalry between transporters from different countries could have a downward effect on transport rates in the region which are shown to be above benchmarks for efficient transport. Date: 2018 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:deveza:v:35:y:2018:i:3:p:388-403 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/0376835X.2018.1456905 Access Statistics for this article Development Southern Africa is currently edited by Marie Kirsten More articles in Development Southern Africa from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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