African Development Bank Supervision Mission on the EATTP

An AfDB Mission led by Mr. A. Oumarou, Principal Transportation Engineer visited Kenya from 24 to 26 March 2008 to supervise the East Africa Trade and Transport Facilitation Project – NCTTCA Component.

The Mission held discussions with senior officials of the Northern Corridor Transit Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTCA) in Mombasa , Kenya to assess project implementation progress, review implementation schedules and targeted outputs, and agree on the year's work program and the immediate implementation actions required.

The objective of the project is to enhance transit transport facilitation and logistics services efficiency along the Northern Corridor by reducing non tariff barriers and uncertainty of transit time.

The project includes the following sub-components:

(i) Northern Corridor Infrastructure Master Plan - To prepare a comprehensive infrastructure master plan for the Northern Corridor and addressing the institutional, financial, and management issues and to prepare a feasibility study and preliminary engineering for three additional one-stop-border post facilities.

(ii) Northern Corridor Transit Facilitation Program – This component includes the iImprovement in the use of the COMESA instruments, providing support to the National Trade and Transport Facilitation Committees and to strengthen the Stakeholders Forum, a study on the the harmonization of regulations, procedures and modalities for the implementation of axle load controls of vehicles on the Northern Corridor and a Comparative Transport Cost Study to develop an analytical model that can be used for exploring various assumptions and investments options.

(iii) Institutional Capacity Building – The project is financing capacity building in the form of a procurement specialist and an IT specialist each for 12 months. In addition short term training for the current staff is also provided.

With regards to the current status of the infrastructure master plan and the comparative cost study, the short list of consulting firms for the assignment has been finalized by TTCA and the Bank has granted a non-objection for the list of consultants. The Request for Proposals document has been submitted to the Bank for review and no-objection.

The meeting also agreed that NCTTCA will consult with COMESA and EAC on the outcome of the SSATP study on Axle Load Harmonization before launching the NCTTCA study. There is also a need to closely coordinate with the national teams in charge of the World Bank Axle Loads components under the project.

For the remaining activities under the Transit Facilitation Program including the customs, documentation, and stakeholders' forums, it was agreed that it was necessary to recruit a short term individual consultant to prepare the program's scoping and the necessary TORs.

Meanwhile, the recruitment of an IT Specialist and a Procurement Specialist has been finalized and the two Experts assumed duty on 15 October and 01 November 2007, respectively.