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Misanet.com / IPS, 7 February - Over the past decade, Gabon's economic development has been hobbled by the country's failure to improve its highway system, although enormous sums of money have been swallowed up by road improvement and construction programmes. The discussion on who is to blame has started in Libreville. The country's road transportation network has deteriorated considerably due to the increasing number of vehicles which use it while, at the same time, road maintenance has been reduced. Government leaders acknowledge that the mismanagement of road construction and rebuilding funds explains the country's absence of reliable ground transportation, and that such transportation is needed to further economic development for this country of 2 million people. A large proportion of its available resources have been poured into just such projects, with no discernible result. "From 1994 to 1997, infrastructure development was a major government expenditure, and most of that money was earmarked for highways during that time," says Richard Damas, one of the co-ordinators of the Highway Development Programme. - Investment in this sector was 39.8 billion CFA francs (56.8 million US dollars), which in 1994 accounted for 30.3 percent of all investment monies, Damas stated. The government disbursed 73.8 million dollars in 1995, 69.3 million in 1996, and 93.4 million in 1997 to improve the road network. In 1998, 1999, and 2000, the government shelled out 1.4 million, 2.1 million and 11.4 million dollars respectively for road improvements. In spite of the ambitious Adjustment and Planning Project for Cities and Transportation (PAPSUT) set up by the World Bank, Gabon has had to deal with many natural impediments to road building, such as dense forests, rivers, and marshy and mountainous areas. "In addition, unfavourable climatic conditions make it difficult to use and maintain the few roads that do exist," explained Marcel Mroula, a clerk of works in a civil engineering firm. The last road improvement project in Libreville was in 1997, when the Organisation of African Unity held their heads of state conference there. Since then, the roads have not been properly maintained and are in extremely poor shape. - During the past five years, the government has nevertheless made enormous efforts to improve the roads in 33 of the nation's cities. Up until then, only the provincial capitals would get that kind of attention, said Jean Francois Ntoutoume Emane, the country's prime minister. The issue of nation-wide road construction has divided the government, and has resulted in the recent resignation of Zacharie Myboto, the Minister of Equipment, Construction, and Cities. President Omar Bongo blamed Myboto personally for the country's crumbling highway system. Myboto defended himself by saying that he did not have sufficient resources available to him to do things any differently. An audit by the Ministry of Economy, Budget and Privatisation revealed that there is no rigorous system to control and monitor work done by private civil engineering firms in Gabon. This fact, said the audit, explained why companies fail to observe proper road-building construction standards, and why each road that is built needs to be rebuilt over and over. Paulin Nang, an urban highway department manager, thinks the country's lack of good governance is behind the highway problem. "There was plenty of money around during the 1970s' oil boom to build a national highway system. The country's leaders, however, are for the most part shareholders in these civil engineering firms. The more often the roads get redone, the better it is for them," he said. Another fact is that Gabon's main civil engineering firms are all French companies which have maintained their monopoly on road construction jobs for the past 40 years. The South African daily business newspaper, Business Day, published an article in February 1999 about the activities of French civil engineering firms in Gabon. The article highlighted the lack of competition in bidding for such jobs, and failure by the companies who are awarded them to properly finish the projects. Business Day wrote: "The execution of large civil engineering jobs has been solely in the hands of French companies operating in Gabon with an unpraiseworthy track record in road construction. In the future, perhaps they could be awarded to South African businesses." South African businessmen, supported by large financial conglomerates, visited Gabon several times to check out prospects for civil engineering jobs. In 1998, in order to introduce competition into the market, the government considered awarding large projects to the LTA Group, a leading South African conglomerate specialising in civil engineering projects. LTA has a presence in Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania. - Overall, road improvement in Gabon means building an all-season highway system passable all year long for a cost of 350 billion CFA francs (500 million dollars), Landry Obame, a technician at the Ministry of Planning, told IPS. The decay of the national highway system places limits on how much Gabon can export to neighbouring countries. It also makes the country seem like the land that time forgot to visitors, as soon as they stray from the main coastal highway. "The lack of regular, trucked-in deliveries of foodstuffs and other products from the interior of the country, from Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea etc. has begun to take its toll in the past few months, so much so that prices have gone up," says Souleymane Gerba, a wholesaler at the market in the Louis neighbourhood. The absence of roads also inhibits the development of tourism, one of the government's big priorities. For many years, air transport has been the only reliable way to get around the country. The Gabonese road network is made up of 7,600 kilometres of rural roads, 900 km of which are paved; almost 4,000 kilometres of laterite roads, and more than 2,700 kilometres of dirt roads.
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