There are various reasons why the road asset in Zambia has been deteriorating over the past
five decades since independence. Much effort to restore the road asset to its original value
and keep it maintained in a good and safe condition was initiated in mid 1990s with the launch
of the Road Sector Investment Plan Phase I which was immediately followed by the launch of a
Phase II to run from 2003 to 2013. It is my appreciation that many diagnostic studies into road
financing strategies which could have led to inefficient road asset management in Zambia have
been undertaken and various solutions tendered. The author takes cognizance that resource
mobilization for road construction and maintenance and subsequent allocation to respective
road programs can often be problematic for an emerging country like Zambia. It has the
potential to lead to inefficiencies in road asset management as has evidently been demonstrated
in the declining road asset value over time. The political as well as the economic landscape
plays a vital role in resource mobilization and allocation strategies as much as the
institutional and the legal framework do. The failure to clear the backlog of maintenance which
normally results largely from deferment of scheduled maintenance due to insufficient annual
budgetary allocation to the road sector maintenance programs has led to the significant
deterioration in road network condition. Exorbitant road construction costs have posed
additional challenges to the fiscus thereby constraining both the quantity and quality of road
infrastructure that could be constructed and maintained at any given time. Recent policy drives
have been categorical in their preference of new road construction aimed at linking Zambia
over road maintenance which plays a pivotal role in road asset management. This creates a
perception that policy pronouncements are at variance to policy documents which promote
sustainable economic development through efficient road investments and could be seen as being
paradoxical in that the actual financing strategies are skewed towards road construction a
recipe of comfort for the next election challenge due to increased visibility on the ground
rather than to maintenance as an astute and effective way of managing the road asset. The
difficult of establishing congruence between government pronouncements and actual road business
strategies in the implementing agencies has over the years posed challenges to the fiscal
policy implementation. Consequently this has often led to serious budget overruns due firstly
to unplanned expenditure and secondly variations due to scope increase resulting from project
implementation without having prior designs. This has led to high operating inefficiencies of
existing roads due to the high level of pavement degradation with the eventual effect of
higher vehicle operating costs longer travel-times driver and passenger discomfort and
ultimately higher agency pavement replacement costs. The damage caused to the economy is
apparent in all this. The author carried out an analysis of road financing strategies in Zambia
taking a special look into the past decade with the view to ascertaining the extent to which
roads budgets have been employed to fund new construction and maintenance. This was necessary
to establish whether there was a mismatch in allocation of resources for roads in terms of
needs and policy in which new road construction is highly favored in preference to
maintenance. It was hoped that if the mismatch existed it would espouse some paradoxes which
existed between the road asset management policies and actual strategies. The research draws
attention to the fact that over 80% of the Core Road Network is in poor condition and only 68%
of the paved Trunk Main and District road network could be said to be in good condition.
Further investigations revealed that the country has been spending an average of 0.71% of its
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