Governance of Transport Corridors in OIC Member States:
Challenges, Cases and Policy Lessons
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Involvement of the stakeholders
Working groups are organized regularly on specific topics to bring together stakeholders from local
authorities, international organisations or the private sector. Most important is the Transport
Facilitation Working group, responsible for implementing a series of soft measures established by an
EU technical assistance team in 2015 called the Flagship Axes Action Plan. The working group is
attended by national representatives, custom authorities, transport industry representatives and
individuals from relevant international organisations such as CEFTA and the World Bank. SEETO is
also encouraging the private sector to participate in infrastructure investment projects through Public
Private Partnerships (PPP). In 2007, a workshop was given on PPP on such themes as the legal
framework for PPP systems, the government’s role, and project managements.
3.2.8 Capacity building: technical assistance and studies
Technical assistance
The SEETO secretariat is responsible for providing technical assistance to the Steering committee. The
SEETIS information system is used for this purpose. The EU is also a key partner for technical
assistance. Currently, the EU provides assistance through Connecta , to help theWestern Balkan nations
with setting up the right institutional framework to ensure an effective allocation of the funds.
Connecta is helping SEETO to set op four specific plans related to road safety, Intelligent Transport
Systems, maintenance and smoothening border crossings. A plan for the last topic is still under
development.
Studies
Studies are commissioned by the steering committee, secretariat or international organisations, most
notably the EU and the World Bank. Studies are crucial for assessing corridor performance and
determining the future direction of SEETO. The current vision for SEETO as set out in the 2018 Multi-
Annual Plan is based on two extensive studies. The first is the Regional Balkans Study (REBIS) by the
World Bank, which was conducted before the establishment of SEETO in 2003, and repeated in 2015.
The second is the 2015 Flagship Action Plan, commissioned by the EU. Studies relate to the status of
the corridor as whole, such as the previously mentioned, to specific topic, such as the road and rail
maintenance performance studies from 2016, or to the performance of the governance, like the three
reports on improvement regarding the data collection and analysis, the projects analysis and
prioritisation, and dissemination and presentation of the results, published in 2014 and commissioned
by the EU.
3.2.9 Assessment of transport governance level
The seven corridor governance domains of the SEETO corridor, as presented in this section, are ranked
against the four defined corridor governance levels (information exchange; coordination; cooperation;
integration), as introduced i Results are presented i