Introduction

Background

The Corridor Performance Measurement and Monitoring (CPMM) mechanism is an empirical tool designed by the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Program to assess the efficiency of its six priority transport corridors.1 The CAREC corridors link the region’s key economic hubs and connect the landlocked member countries to Eurasian and global markets.2

This mechanism is used to (i) identify the causes of delay and unnecessary cost in moving cargo along the links and through the nodes of each CAREC corridor, including at border-crossing points (BCPs), and intermediate stops; (ii) help the national authorities in the CAREC countries determine how to address the bottlenecks thus identified; and (iii) assess the impact of initiatives for regional cooperation implemented by the members along these corridors.3

Launched in 2009, the CPMM methodology and collection process captures a range of ground-level information by measuring and recording data on actual cargo shipments along CAREC corridors and at high traffic BCPs prioritized by the CAREC member countries.

The CPMM employs the aggregated data collected for the four trade facilitation indicators (TFIs) to evaluate the overall performance and efficiency of the CAREC corridors each year.4 Measured over the years and across the corridors, the trends in the indicators provide a comparative picture for assessing and determining the effectiveness of transport and trade improvement initiatives in the region. The four TFIs are as follows:

(i) TFI1: Time taken to clear a BCP. This indicator is the average length of time (in hours) taken to move cargo across a border from the entry to the exit point of each of the two countries’ BCPs at that crossing. The entry and exit points are typically primary control centers where customs, immigration, and quarantine are handled. Along with the standard clearance formalities, this includes waiting time, unloading and loading time, time taken to transfer shipments when rail track gauges change at border crossings, and other factors. The aim is to capture both the complexities and inefficiencies in the border-crossing process.

(ii) TFI2: Cost incurred at a BCP. This is the average total cost in US dollars of moving cargo across a border from entry to exit at a BCP. Both official and unofficial payments are included.

(iii) TFI3: Cost incurred to travel a corridor section. This is the average total cost in US dollars incurred in transporting one shipment along a corridor section within a country or across borders. One shipment refers to goods carried in a truck, container or a wagon. Since each sample can have different cargo weight and travel through different distances, the weight of the goods are scaled to 20 tons and over 500 km. A corridor section is defined as a stretch of road or railway track of 500 km long. Both official and unofficial payments are included. In practice, however, transport cost figures reported by CPMM refer to transport rates for trucks or railway tariffs for trains due to data collection constraints. 5

(iv) TFI4: Speed to travel along the CAREC corridors. This is the average speed in kilometers per hour (km/h) at which a unit of cargo travels along a corridor section within a country or across borders. Speed is calculated by dividing the total distance traveled by the duration of travel. Distance and time measurements include border crossings.

CPMM uses two measures of speed: speed without delay (SWOD) and speed with delay (SWD). SWOD is the ratio of the distance travelled to the time spent by a vehicle in motion between origin and destination (actual traveling time). SWD is the ratio of the distance travelled to the total time spent on the journey, including the time the vehicle was in motion and the time it was stationary. All activities that delay the vehicle (customs controls, inspections, loading and unloading, and police checkpoints, among others) are recorded by drivers. SWOD represents a measure of the condition of physical infrastructure (such as roads and railways), while SWD is an indicator of the efficiency of BCPs along the CAREC Corridors.

The data for TFI1 and TFI2, which respectively measure the time and cost at a BCP, have three components: (i) the time from when the shipment on a truck or train begins to queue outside the gate to the time when it enters the BCP; (ii) the time it takes for the activities inside a BCP (which are typically customs, immigration, and transport inspections); and (iii) the time it then takes for the shipment to gain authorization to leave the BCP. Notably, a BCP can serve inbound as well as outbound traffic, depending on the direction of travel, inbound traffic referring to a shipment entering the BCP (import), and outbound traffic referring to a shipment leaving it (export). TFI1 and TFI2 are disaggregated at each BCP as the values differ depending on the travel direction.

Furthermore, time and cost indicator data for individual activities at each BCP are collected and assessed. The same are carried out for other intermediate stops, such as toll booths and security inspections.6 This helps to identify the location and the nature of the delays along a corridor.

Objectives

The objectives of the CPMM are:

(i) implementing a robust and practical approach to evaluate corridor performance that are derived from and relatable to actual commercial shipments;

(ii) analyzing the data and information using pre-defined indicators so that any changes to the corridors’ performance could be identified and explained;

(iii) reporting the findings to policymakers who can assess the need for infrastructure or policy changes or appraise the success of past efforts in modernizing infrastructure or policies.

While there are many other tools and methodologies used by other international development organizations, CPMM is unique because of the extremely large sample size (more than 2,000 samples per year) collected every month. This frequency is important because other studies tend to focus on a certain point in time and cannot not detect seasonal or monthly changes. Another unique strength of the CPMM is its samples of actual commercial shipments across CAREC corridors, collected from transport operators. Actual time and cost data for shipments that have travelled along CAREC corridors are used, and not those collected from surveys or polls of perceptions. This empirical method makes CPMM’s findings more reliable than surveys that ask for opinions and perceptions.

Target Readers

CPMM Annual Reports are developed with the primary aim to serve policymakers and stakeholders in the public sector. When ADB funds technical or financial assistance to projects in CAREC, the projects are formulated and determined with policymakers as close partners. CPMM serves as a monitoring and evaluation tool to appraise the effectiveness of development efforts. Thus, the contents are tailored to report important trends, developments and performance metrics to the public sector. The aggregated nature of the findings is less useful to the private sector, which is more interested in specific origin destination pairs and routes. This is not to reduce the significance of the private sector because the sources of the data and information originate from the transport operators representing the private sector. Some recommendations also originate from dialogues with and feedback from the private sector.

Thus, CPMM Annual Reports could be seen as a platform to gather findings from the private sector, and presenting the key messages, supported by empirical evidence, to the policymakers. This is an important way to avoid potential conflicts of interest. This is because the CPMM estimations (e.g. border-crossing time and cost) could be influenced by poor decisions in infrastructure design, or cumbersome procedures that originate from stakeholders in the public sector. Tasking these agencies to measure their own performance might not present a transparent and fair set of results.

  1. The CAREC Program is a partnership of 11 countries—Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, People’s Republic of China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—working together to promote development, accelerate economic growth, reduce poverty reduction through cooperation. For more information, see CAREC home page www.carecprogram.org. ↩︎
  2. The CPMM annual report is a technical document and, for the benefit of readers, includes standard explanations and definitions. Parts of the introduction contain standard and recurring descriptions of the CAREC CPMM background, methodology, names of BCPs, and appendixes, and should remain consistent with previous annual reports. ↩︎
  3. A detailed description of each CAREC corridor is found at www.carecprogram.org/?page_id=20. ↩︎
  4. The TFIs and their statistical derivations are explained in Appendix 3. ↩︎
  5. Transport cost is viewed from the perspective of the shipper and/or receiver, and represents the market rate paid to move the cargo, rather than the carrier’s cost of providing the service. ↩︎
  6. Activities encompass all anticipated checks and procedures, both at BCPs and at intermediate stops along the transit corridor (see Appendix 4). Appendix 5 provides a list of CAREC BCPs covered by the CPMM. ↩︎