ZIMBABWE‘S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE to be exchanged at national borders, often leading to extensive delays due to shortages in traction capacity.

## **Challenges**

The NRZ is not functioning effectively as part of the regional corridor. It has very poor operational performance, one of the worst in southern Africa. For example, as table 11 shows, labor productivity and wagon productivity are comparatively low. Over the past decade, the NRZ‘s technical, operational, and financial performance have been adversely affected by instabilities in the Zimbabwean economy, which, along with the NRZ‘s obligation as a public entity to provide certain uncompensated public-service obligations, has led to poor financial performance. Moreover, as a quasi-government organization, the NRZ cannot always respond to market dynamics. This has culminated in loss of network capacity leading to reduced traffic, reduced revenues, and reduced availability of funds for infrastructure maintenance and renewal. The dilapidated state of the infrastructure has resulted in some major accidents and derailments (World Bank 2008a).

In neighboring Zambia, the operator RSZ practices discriminatory pricing for rail freight, which is distorting rail traffic flows along the entire North–South Corridor, including those experienced by the NRZ. Across much of Sub-Saharan Africa rail tariffs are close to $0.05 per tonne-km, on a par with or slightly below that of roads. But the unregulated rail-freight tariffs charged by the Zambian operator RSZ can stand at more than $2.00 per tonne-km, or 40 times the region‘s average. These tariffs reflect an abuse of monopoly power, motivated in part by vertical integration, with the same concessionaire operating the Zambian **low-income countrie** rail network and the Beitbridge border crossing from Zimbabwe into South Africa. The high level of these tariffs is having a distortionary effect on traffic flows and investment decisions along the entire corridor. For example, copper exports from the Democratic Republic of Congo are currently going by road to avoid these charges, whereas they would be more naturally suited to rail transportation via the NRZ network. Resolving this situation is far from straightforward, and would probably require a major renegotiation of the Zambian rail concession contract, combined with careful tariff regulation thereafter.

# Air transport

## **Achievements**

Zimbabwe has experienced steady growth in air transport capacity since 2004. About half of the seats are provided by the national carrier Air Zimbabwe, and a further 30 percent by two leading South African carriers.

Zimbabwe‘s record on air transport safety is relatively strong. Air Zimbabwe, the national flag carrier out of Harare, is in the International Air Transport Association (IATA) International Safety Audit (IOSA) registry, meaning it has passed IATA‘s operational-safety audit. In addition, the 2004 International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Safety Oversight Audit found Zimbabwe overall to be slightly above global averages for the implementation of safety regulation and practices; in a follow-up, the country had an implementation rating of around 86 percent, compared to the global average of no more than 68 percent for the year. None of Zimbabwe‘s carriers appear on the European Union‘s (EU‘s) blacklist, and 35