It costs six times more money to move freight from Cameroon to Chad, and twice as much time, than to ship it all the way to China, a forum on central African transport issues heard Thursday.
Poor infrastructure is to blame for the high cost of moving goods within the sub-region, Anicet-Georges Dologuele, president of the Central African States Development Bank, told the two-day forum in Congo-Brazzaville.
"Transporting a container of goods between Douala and N'Djamena is six times more expensive than between Shanghai and Douala," he said.
To cover the 1,900 kilometres (1,180 miles) between Cameroon's main port city of Douala and Chad's capital N'Djamena would meanwhile take 60 days, "compared to just 30 days by sea" to China, added the banker, a former prime minister of the Central African Republic.
He went on: "Compared to the rest of Africa, transporting a container costs 3.1 times more along the Douala-N'Djamena corridor (4.21 dollars per kilometre) than on the Maputo-Johannesburg one (1.38 dollars per kilometre)."
The six-nation Economic Community of Central African States is the least endowed of any sub-region in the world in terms of road transport, with just 8,182 kilometres of paved roads in 2003 and not much more since then, he said.
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