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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Ivory Coast
Index
As the demand for Côte d'Ivoire's exports increased in
the
1960s and 1970s, the government improved the road network
dramatically. From 25,000 kilometers of roads in 1961, the
network
expanded by 1986 to 53,765 kilometers, of which 3,765 were
paved,
including 141 kilometers of divided highway. Paved roads
linked
Abidjan with all major population centers in the country,
and
although they constituted only 7 percent of the total road
network,
they carried approximately 70 percent of the traffic.
Roads were
the principal mode of domestic transport, carrying about
78 percent
of interurban passenger traffic and 70 percent of freight
traffic.
In Abidjan, as elsewhere in the country, traffic growth
was rapid,
expanding 10 percent per year for passenger traffic and 7
percent
per year for freight traffic from 1970 to 1980. In 1986 a
daily
average of 14,000 vehicles entered and left Abidjan, as
opposed to
an average of 4,800 vehicles in 1969.
A 1969 World Bank transportation survey strongly
recommended
improvements to the primary road network during the 1970s.
Over the
first five years of the plan, inadequate planning and a
lack of
overall policy coordination and evaluation resulted in
gross
overspending. Although 75 percent of the road projects
originally
proposed were implemented, they cost 123 percent more than
the
amount earmarked to pay for the entire program.
Nevertheless,
highway construction did not abate. In 1986 the World Bank
approved
a US$40 million loan as part of a US$230 million highway
construction and improvement program, described as the
"quickest
way to inject money into the economy and affect all
sectors." For
the same year, the BSIE earmarked CFA F39.4 billion for
highway
construction and improvement.
Data as of November 1988
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