THE REPUBLIC OF CONGO’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE that need to be cleared. It also lacks a detailed inventory of its assets. Furthermore, given that the company is about to lose its monopoly on the Pointe Noire/Brazzaville corridor, it needs to develop a new tariff and commercial strategy that will strike a balance between its commercial and public service objectives under a transparent subsidy scheme to be paid for when it comes to passenger services by the Government. Finally, the company lacks a clear strategy to renew and upgrade its human resources although it has launched a recruiting plan for hundreds of employees and is embarked in a multiyear FCFA70 billion investment in track rehabilitation and rolling stock upgrade plan 100 percent financed by Government.

**Table 4. Benchmarking Congo’s rail infrastructure, 2010**

|Railway|CFCO|Camrail|SNCC|Transrail|Madarail|Sitarail|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Country|Congo, Rep.|Cameroon|Congo,<br>Dem. Rep.|Senegal &<br>Mali|Madagascar|Côte<br>d’Ivoire &<br>Burkina<br>Faso|
|Traffic volume, traffic units (millions)|354|1282|241|443|160|909|
|Traffic density, freight, 1000 ton-km/km|348|1161|66|344|236|721|
|Traffic density, passenger, 1000 passenger-<br>km/km|260|420|10|35|9|—|
|Performance|||||||
|Staff: 1000 traffic units per Staff|168|571|19|278|164|692|
|Locomotive availability in %|—|86|22|55|81|93|
|Derailment frequency, traffic units/mainline<br>derailment (millions)|—|26.0|0.8|2.2|1.3|101.0|
|Pricing|||||||
|Average unit tariff, freight, US cents/ton-km|17.0|8.9|21.5|7.2|5.8|6.7|

Source: World Bank, Transport Unit of the Africa Department (AFTTR) — = data not available.

Investments in the road and rail sectors will be more effective if packaged to support productive activities along existing ―natural‖ corridors. As a recent infrastructure corridor analysis shows (BriceñoGarmendia and Foster 2009), multimodal integrated investment packages in such corridors are expected to yield a much higher return than the same investments conducted in isolation. Road corridor investments, for example, are projected to yield higher returns if combined with investments in feeder roads in areas of high agricultural potential for domestic markets, such as Sangha and Cuvette-Ouest in the north and Plateaux in the southeast. Furthermore, the rate of return on investments in river upgrading and feeder roads could double when accompanied by improvements to the downstream road and rail corridors. The corridor investment package with the highest return—a projected 24 percent—links PointeNoire to Brazzaville by rail and Brazzaville to Ouesso by river. The northern road corridor linking Brazzaville to its corresponding agricultural areas has a projected rate of return of 12 percent.

Surface transport investments must be planned and implemented in coordination with neighboring countries. For example, a road–rail bridge linking Brazzaville and Kinshasa would eliminate the need for transit traffic to cross the Congo River in barges, at an estimated cost of $20 per tonne-kilometer. To put things in perspective, costs for rail transportation are estimated in US$0.17 per tonne-kilometer and for roads about $0.20-30 per tonne-kilometer .

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