BURKINA FASO’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE Despite the relatively good condition of transit roads, managing transit and easing the costs of trading across borders remain enormous challenges, and consequently, Burkina Faso faces enormous premiums on global trade. Costs to import are higher than the Sub-Saharan African average and twice as high as those faced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Similarly, time and costs to export are among the highest—much higher than the average OECD country (table 3). Furthermore, domestic operators are forced to pay a sizeable 28 percent of the price for imports, compared to a world average of 6 percent and a Sub-Saharan African average of 10 percent (World Bank 2009a **).** And even as Burkina handles being the lead cotton exporter of the continent, its integration into the global economy depends on achieving cheap and reliable access to imports that, as inputs, contribute to the competitiveness of exports and production for the local market.

**Table 3. Burkina Faso’s barriers to trade are much higher than the rest of Africa’s**

|Indicator|**Burkina**<br>**Faso**|Niger|Mali|Cameroon|Côte<br>d'Ivoire|Ghana|Senegal|SSA|OECD|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Documents to export (number)|**11**|8|7|10|10|6|6|8|4|
|Time to export (days)|**41**|59|32|23|25|19|11|34|11|
|Cost to export ($ per container)|**2,262**|3,545|2,075|1,250|1,969|1,013|1,098|1,942|1,090|
|Documents to import (number)|**11**|10|10|11|9|7|5|9|5|
|Time to import (days)|**49**|64|37|26|36|29|14|39|11|
|Cost to import($ per container)|**3,830**|3,545|2,955|2,002|2,577|1,203|1,940|2,365|1,146|

_Source:_ World Bank 2011. _Note:_ SSA = Sub-Saharan Africa; OECD = Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

But what else is affecting Burkina’s transport costs? Trucking cartels and red tape contribute to high transportation costs and diminished international competitiveness. The absence of competition in the trucking industry, which is operated on a cartel-type rotational basis for all operators, is the most significant contributor to high transport costs and needs to be addressed at a regional level. In fact, the western corridors in Africa are on average the most inefficient in the continent: they have the lowest implicit velocity (about 6 km/hour) and among the highest tariffs (8 cents/tonne-km) despite the relatively good quality of the roads (table 4). The enormous (implicit and explicit) costs due to regulatory and institutional failures are perhaps the underlying reason why (despite the revival of corridors with Togo, Ghana, and Benin in the wake of the Côte D’Ivoire crisis) Burkina still ranks poorly in trade across borders.

**Table 4. Trucking cartels and red tape are major contributors to high transport costs**

|**Corridor**|**Length (km)**|**Roads in good**<br>**condition (%)**|**Trade density ($**<br>**million per km)**|**Implicit velocity**<br>**(km/hr)**|**Freight tariff ($/tonne-**<br>**km)**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Western|2,050|72|8.2|6.0|0.08|
|Central|3,280|49|4.2|6.1|0.13|
|Eastern|2,845|82|5.7|8.1|0.07|
|Southern|5,000|100|27.9|11.6|0.05|

_Source:_ AICD 2010b.

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