Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
40
The corridor not only leverages finance, but also generates supply, especially when the
corridor evolves and increasingly supports economic activity. This causes the perceived risks
to be reduced, enabling the corridor managers to attract additional investment.
El-Hifnawi (2015) adds the so-called financing gap. Private funding can fill this gap and speed
up project implementation, but it also requires more work to secure, compared to public funds.
In the case of TEN-T, CEF calls aim at closing this funding gap. The funding gap is the part of
the (discounted) investment costs that are not covered by the (discounted) net revenues
generated by the project. In the context of this call the "modulated EU co-funding amount" is
the lowest of the following values: "funding gap amount" or "maximum co funding amount".
Therefore, the success of the TEN T Corridors has been in both attracting investment for
infrastructure and also in investment in related services.
3.3. Economic Factors
As explained in the previous paragraph, there are no indicators that uniquely reflect the effects
of the successful TEN-T corridors. EU membership, trade and TEN-T are closely connected. As
a proxy the change in openness and the change in per capita income of EU Member States
during their accession phase have been chosen to reflect economic results of countries joining
the TEN-T network.
According to Lejour et al. (2006), EU membership is crucial for the ten new member states to
catch up with the average income level in the old member states17. Lejour et al. (2006)
illustrate this with some figures:
 EU membership increases trade between two of its member states with about 34%;
 EU membership induces countries to improve the quality of their institutions and
hence trade;
 Trade increases by 22% if institutions improve, yielding a total trade increase of 56%;
 Improved openness increases income by 37.5%;
 Adding the effect of improved institutions on income, income increases by 39%.
(EuropeAid, 2015) shows that the performance of the new Member States compares favorably
with the EU-27 (see . “While the countries have each made economic progress
during their pre-accession and post- accession period, each does still remain below the EU-27
average for GDP per capita. In this regard the availability of public financing to process the
reforms remains a constraint for some.”
17 Lejour refers to Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia.