very little or no commercial activity) in different regions, the indicator may overstate the gap with comparator countries. For example, South Africa performance on density in terms of land appears similar to Brazil (203 road kilometers per 1,000 sq km), another resource rich, coastal country with vast segments of the territory sparsely populated; similarly Indonesia and Malaysia also have very similar road density in terms of land (203 and 200 road kilometers per 1,000 sq km, respectively).<sup>11</sup> **_Rail_** _lines density in terms of population_ , by contrast, is very high when compared to SSA, Middle East & North Africa, South Asia, East Asia Pacific, and Latin America & the Caribbean. It is slightly higher than the average for all middle-income and just below the benchmark upper-middle-income group. South Africa’ _rail lines density in terms of land,_ however, is far behind those in middle-income and high-income countries and is also behind South Asia but ahead of other groups. Similar qualification for the interpretation of road densitiy applies here as well.

**_Quality—technical._** According to the database, South Africa has one of the lowest percentages of paved roads at 21%. This is lower than SSA (25%) and low-income countries (30%) and far behind upper-middle-income (57%) and high-income countries (82%). This may reflect the legacy of the strong urban bias and the economic configuration of economic activity inherited from the Apartheid era. Four important caveats are in order here. First, local information on paved roads show a higher percentage (31%) that was already achieved in 1994 (Perkins et al. 2005); as of writing, we could not reconcile this with the number from the benchmarking database that on this indicator originates in the World Bank’s World Development Report 2004. But even if the 31% figure is taken at face value, while it would imply better performance in South Africa than in SSA region, it would remain worse than in upper-middleincome countries. Second, the quality of the paved roads variable itself probably hides considerable cross-country variation: paved roads in South Africa may be of higher quality than those in most SSA countries, but this variation would presumably be much less relevant for the upper-middle-income group. Third, the proportion of roads paved may hide a relatively well developed road network in terms of road kilometers (thus inflating the denominator of the proportion), though the preceding discussion puts some limits on this possibility. Fourth, given the semi-arid climate of South Africa, and the low population densities in large parts of South Africa’s geography, it is not clear what the optimal pave roads proportion might be. Nevertheless, irrespective of which proportion is used (21% or 31%), we note that that South Africa reports a lower proportion than its benchmark group of upper-middle-income countries, and significantly lower than high-income OECD countries.

**_Quality—perception._** South Africa has one of the longest travel times to work in main cities (35 minutes) when compared to upper-middle-income (29 minutes), high-income OECD (32 minutes) and SSA (34 minutes) although the difference is small. The world average is 31 minutes. While the small difference makes it difficult to infer much of this comparison, the long commutes in South Africa may also reflects the inherited road network from the pre-1994 era that now results in the majority of the population often facing long and costly commutes; in some communities, commuting costs may reach prohibitive levels as proportion of the prospective wage, thereby discouraging job

> 11 Euchache and Goicoechea (2005), Table A4-2, pp. 105-07.

25