South Africa weighs measures to improve rail, port efficiency

South Africa’s government plans to announce a set of measures to help improve the nation’s inefficient rail and port infrastructure cited by major exporters as a constraint on their businesses.

Chief executive officers from the nation’s mining, farming, automotive and other industries presented proposals on how to improve the network’s efficiency at a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday, the presidency said in a statement on Thursday. The talks follow a meeting between Ramaphosa and the board of state-owned rail and port operator Transnet SOC Ltd. last month, when he directed the company to implement reforms to end the nation’s logistics crisis.

“Government will consider some of the proposals presented and act on them quickly in order to unlock much needed investments into the economy,” Ramaphosa’s spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, said in the statement. “Over the course of the coming weeks, government will consider and announce a set of measures that will add impetus to the work that is currently underway to improve rail and port efficiencies.”