Governance of Transport Corridors in OIC Member States:
Challenges, Cases and Policy Lessons
10
the cornerstone for further corridor development. One way to move forward is to expand the legal
foundation of TRACECA as to commit member states to carry through reforms. As the TRACECA
countries are highly different in terms of culture, history and political culture, a strategy could be to
favour regional or bilateral treaties over corridor wide agreements. Such regional agreements includes
member states that are located in geographical proximity to each other and which have rather similar
political systems. Once a set of measures has been implemented successfully regionally, they may be
spread across the whole region. Good practices of this corridor are presented below:
 The EU was the main driver behind the establishment of the corridor, providing knowledge and
resources. This showcases that value of incorporating international organisations the development
process of the corridor;
 With respect to its legal framework, TRACECA is marked by a series of legal agreements for which
the member can decide individually whether to sign it or not.
Based on the above, it can be concluded that there is no one-size-fits-all governance level. Indeed,
setting up a corridor governance system is dynamic and situational, depending on local and regional
circumstances. Having said that, lessons can be learned from each of the the case studies, as presented
above.
Recommendations towards improving governance of transport corridors
General recommendations
The governance framework enables us to describe each corridor along two dimensions: (i) the topics
that are covered in the governance of a corridor and (ii) the depth of these topics. Moreover, if each
corridor is inserted in the framework, it can operate as a benchmarking tool to identify areas upon
which to improve the corridor. The assumption here is that the higher the degree of integration
between the corridor participants, the more efficient transport flows along the corridor. Of course, this
depends on political will and the ambition of policy makers and business representatives. In general,
if corridor managers seek to improve the performance of a corridor, the framework can be used to
identify specific topics to address to improve the governance of a corridor. Transcending the
framework, the following recommendations have been identified which are independent of the
transport corridor governance level.
First, the general rule is that the governance domains should be developed in harmony with each other .
Ambitious objectives without a strong legal basis to commit the members to carry through reforms
(including sanctions in case of non-compliance) makes it difficult to achieve reform-demanding
objectives. Widespread corridor promotion without a performance monitoring system and data to
justify investments in the corridor makes it difficult to convince potential investors and other
stakeholders. In other words, if the governance domains are developed according to the governance
level of the whole corridor, they are complementing to each other. Typically, once all domains are
brought into balance, evolution to a deeper form of integration is worthwhile.
Second, it was observed that international organisations played a key role in carrying forward corridor
development, especially in getting the process of the ground. With the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor (ALC), the
World Bank played a key role in initiating the corridor and the support of AfDB and ECOWAS supported
further progress. Both for SEETO and notably TRACECA, the EU had a prominent role in bringing
together the member states, negotiating the legal framework, commissioning studies, hosting training
sessions and more. For the Eurasian Central Corridor, UNESCAP is playing a similar role by publishing
strategic documents and performance studies to justify the establishment of governance institution on