Overly belated, though, the recommendations of the Special Task Force of the Communication Ministry for an incentives package for import of multi-axle trucks, will certainly be seen as making sense. This should be all the more so, the recommendations because also include rationalisation of duty structure, with a view to improving operational efficiency of the cargo handling road fleet.
The suggestion forms part of a comprehensive thrust, to address the accumulating burden on the country's highway infrastructure from multiple overload stress, reducing its life to less than half. Moreover, it has noted that the overall disarray in the existing system has been catapulting annual maintenance/rehabilitation costs to staggering proportions. Again, as a highway with a 10-year design life reportedly becomes unserviceable in only 18 months, thereby needing rehabilitation five times during this period, there should be left little to allow continuation of such an alarming trend.
As for excessive overloading on the road network, this too should become evident from the fact that the present fleet of road transport vehicles has been found to be utterly insufficient to cope with the transport demand, more so of the long haul traffic. Add to this, unabated competition among truckers for heavier loads, to cover transport expenses, and it will point to a more agonising future.
Needless also to point out, resort to use of unauthorised technical changes in vehicles for the sake of carrying higher weight, under such compelling circumstances, lead to poor enforcement of laws. As such, the Communication Ministry's idea of the problems faced by the transport sector, emanating from availability of only a few Pakistan assembled new rigid trucks from Hino and Nissan (2 axle and 3 axle), should appeal to reason.
For, as it has pointed out, the very survival of the transport fleet in the country is left to the mercy of local body makers for conversion of old buses/dump trucks into 2-axle trucks or opting to strengthen the old junk frame, suspension, and enlarging volumetric loading capacity. Moreover, imported used dumpers are also modified as rigid or articulated trucks, simply to facilitate overloading.
As for composition of the road transport fleet, comprising over 180,000 trucks, mostly ramshackle, with 2-axle trucks (67 percent), articulated trucks (25 percent), and 3-axle trucks (only 8 percent), it will point to quite a big gap in actual demand for high haulage vehicles.
However, in its dilapidated form it can only perpetuate uneconomical operations, thereby pointing to the urgent need for rationalisation of trucking fleet to balance its composition as an essential component of a "fleet replacement and modernisation strategy" on high priority basis.
Understandable, as such, will be the recommendation of the Task Force for a drastic cut in customs duty on import of trucks in both the CKD and CBU conditions. The same can be said about its proposal for abolition of 20 percent custom duty on import of trucks in CKD condition, together with reduction of the existing 60 percent duty on import of trucks in CBU condition to 10 percent.
Also proposed are incentives for domestic truck manufacturing industry at both import and manufacturing stages, while allowing import of multi-axle prime movers/truck towers for the first three years, alongside modernisation of assembly units.
According to the Task Force, the domestic truck manufacturing/assembling industry should cater for assembly needs of multi-axle trucks of 'EURO 3' standards to meet 60 percent of the capacity progressively over the next three-five years, while weeding out the existing assembly units engaged in production of "aspirated engine vehicles".
It has also recommended reorganising and restructuring the existing, unregulated, trailer and truck body fabrication and manufacturing sector, which employs over half-a-million workforce, with better technology and input management.
In the opinion of the Task Force, besides non-availability of long-term bank loans at discounted interest rates for trucks, improper distribution between road and railways in freight sharing has compounded the problem. Be that as it may, the grim fact remains that Railways' share has remained too small and for too long.
It is another matter that no serious thought was given during the past decades to this disparity contributing to the accumulated problems on the transportation front. Strangely enough, this is just the reverse of the situation the world over, where railways, as far more efficient and cheaper means of transportation, have gained widespread popularity, thereby adding meaning to sustained economic development.
As earlier pointed out in these columns, this was more or less true of the transportation sector in the subcontinent during the pre-partition British period. However, the early planners of the new nation's economy, instead of starting from where the British had left, hastened with vainglorious ideas of rapid industrialisation.
This, of course, has reference also to gross neglect of the two key sectors, agriculture and transportation. Needless to point out, for its sheer neglect transportation eventually led to serious distortions in the process of movement of people and goods, thereby retarding the pace of the country's economic progress over too long a period. Now that a much belated effort is being made to address the mounting predicament on the transportation front, time has come for an objective comprehension of how best and how soon to restore Railways to its right place in the country's transportation system, while cutting road transport to its proper size.