ALAN PEAT THE NEW national freight logistics strategy for SA was launched by minister of transport Jeff Radebe in Pretoria this week – in a document entitled “New Vision for Freight Logistics System”. “This has been worked on for two years,” said Brenda Horne, executive director of Maputo Corridor Logistics Initiative (MCLI) – who has had a special interest and involvement in the formulation of the strategy because of the “corridor-driven” aspect. “It will dictate the future planning of all the modes of transport in SA – and will be a key factor in the development of the local logistics industry of tomorrow.” Unfortunately, because of the timing of the launch for September 20, FTW went to print just before the details of the document were made public. However, we have access to the draft of the strategy released by the department of transport last November for stakeholder comment. And, although it is believed that there have been substantial changes to the details of the original green paper, it can be expected that the key recommendations outlined have remained substantially the same. These, at November 22, 2004, were to: l Create an institutional structure which is customer-orientated and delivery-focused; l Deal with current system bottlenecks and inefficiencies; l Develop an approach which allows for sustained re-investment in the asset base of the freight logistics sector; l Plan the participation of the private sector in a sustained manner with a clear vision of what role the private sector will play in sustained provision of infrastructure and as competing operators providing high-value differentiated services to customers (The role of the regulator will be significant in this regard, particularly with respect to infrastructure and the managed introduction of competition). It was also envisaged that infrastructure providers, under the direction of the regulator, would establish concessions for infrastructure, and integrated concessions including both infrastructure and operations. This would occur in the rail, port, road and air freight sub-sectors of the freight logistics sector.
