Person:
Kunaka, Charles
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Transport,
Trade
Degrees
ORCID
Departments
Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Charles Kunaka is a Lead Specialist on Connectivity, based at the World Bank Group offices in Singapore. He joined the World Bank in 2006 as Senior Transport Specialist and has since worked on numerous trade and transport facilitation, logistics and connectivity projects, both analytical and operational. Charles co-leads the Global Infrastructure Connectivity Alliance, a G20 initiative. Charles works on numerous projects in South Asia, East and Southern Africa and the ASEAN region. He is a task team leader of several investment operations among them the India Capacity Augmentation of National Waterway 1 Project, Accelerating Regional Integration in East African Community Project and the Great Lakes Trade Facilitation project. Charles is also involved in logistics-related analytical activities in several countries including Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Bosnia. Charles has published on several topics surrounding logistics and connectivity including the Trade and Transport Corridor Management Toolkit and the Quantitative Assessment of Road Transport Agreements. He has expertise on economic corridors, transport services and logistics services. Charles holds an MSc from Cranfield University and a PhD from University College London, both on transport economics and policy.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 17
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Publication
Quantitative Analysis of Road Transport Agreements (QuARTA)
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-04-13)Road freight transport is indispensable to international economic cooperation and foreign trade. Across all continents, it is commonly used for short and medium distances and in long distance haulage when minimizing time is important. In all instances governments play a critical role in ensuring the competitive advantage of private sector operators. Countries often have many opportunities to minimize the physical or administrative barriers that increase costs, take measures to enhance the attractiveness and competitiveness of road transport, or generally nurture the integral role of international road freight transport in the global trade logistics industry. Road freight transport is critical to domestic and international trade. It is the dominant mode of transport for overland movement of trade traffic, carrying more than 80 percent of traffic in most regions. Generally, nearly all trade traffic is carried by road at some point. Therefore, the cost and quality of road transport services is of critical importance to trade competitiveness of countries and regions within countries. In fact, road transport is fundamental to modern international division of labor and supply-chain management. -
Publication
Trade Dimensions of Logistics Services : A Proposal for Trade Agreements
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)Services have a direct impact on the competitiveness of the goods sector. This paper illustrates the importance of logistics services, their trade dimension, and how regulatory issues act as perhaps one of the most significant barriers to competitiveness. The paper discusses recent developments and the role and benefits of logistics services and argues that from a trade agreement standpoint, logistics is a network industry that ultimately provides one service to a final client. It analyzes logistics services from a services trade perspective and proposes that trade agreements should ensure access to and use of the infrastructure required to provide these services recognizing their interconnectedness. The paper offers suggestions on additional policies World Trade Organization members, and countries negotiating services agreements regionally or bilaterally, could follow in order to fully exploit the opportunities provided by logistics services. Local regulations and complementary policies in areas such as trade facilitation will always remain important. -
Publication
The Connectivity of South Asian Cities in Infrastructure Networks
(Taylor and Francis, 2013-11-05)This map summarizes information on the connectivity of 67 important South Asian cities concerning infrastructure networks. The map combines four information layers to reveal a city's overall stature in the region's infrastructure networks, i.e. rail, road, air, and information technology networks. Three dimensions of connectivity are shown: edge thickness reflecting tie strength between pairs of cities; node size reflecting a city's betweenness centrality; and node color reflecting the dominant geographical orientation of a city's connections. A threshold is used for the edges to ensure the map does not appear clogged. The map shows that major connections tend to be within-country linkages between large cities. There are five communities in South Asia's urban infrastructure networks, which largely follow national borders. Delhi, Mumbai, Lahore, Karachi, Chennai, Colombo and Dhaka are shown to be important nodes for the infrastructural integration of South Asia, as these cities mediate flows between relatively unconnected communities and cities. -
Publication
Institutional Arrangements for Transport Corridor Management in Sub-Saharan Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-10)Corridor efficiency is important to the competitiveness of most of the African economies, especially those that are landlocked. Corridors can be defined as a collection of routes linking several economic centers, countries and ports. While some are only road transport corridors, most of them include more than one mode of transport. The Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program (SSATP) places emphasis on the facilitation of inter-state trade along corridors. It particularly focuses on identifying impediments to the efficient movement of traffic and seeks to promote appropriate strategies for minimizing hurdles to such movement. This objective is also consistent with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Almaty Plan of Action. This concept paper reviews the legal and institutional options for establishing corridor management groups and proposes a framework for establishing such groups along all major transport corridors. Some of the lessons have emerged from the existing corridor management arrangements: (i) corridor groups interventions are problem solving and the operational procedures should encourage this objective and retain flexibility necessary to be responsive; (ii) working groups can be formed on an ad hoc basis to address specific issues and disbanded once the objective met; and (iii) the group organization should ensure public-private interaction at all levels. A three-tier corridor management institution is proposed for regional transport corridors without any arrangement. The institutional hierarchy would comprise a stakeholders group, a core group and a secretariat. Funding arrangements for existing corridor groups include membership fees, contributions by governments, traffic-based usage fees, or donor support. Generally, the funding mechanism of a corridor group would be influenced by its legal instrument. Once established, the group would be able to develop an action plan and deliver some results making it possible to introduce a usage-based funding mechanism such as a tonnage levy. -
Publication
Trade and Transport Corridor Management Toolkit
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-05-07)Trade and transport corridors—major routes that facilitate the movement of people and goods between regions and between countries—have existed for millennia. They enable regions and countries to offer high-capacity transport systems and services that reduce trade and transport costs by creating economies of scale. Regional corridors are particularly important to landlocked countries, often providing the only overland routes to regional and international markets. Despite a long and complex history, guidance is often lacking on how to design, determine the components to include, and analyze the impact of corridor projects. The Trade and Transport Corridor Management Toolkit fills this void. The Toolkit synthesizes the experiences of the World Bank and other development agencies in assessing, designing, implementing, and evaluating the impact of trade and transport corridor projects. It saves project developers the task of looking for the best available tools and ensures greater consistency to facilitate comparison and benchmarking. The Toolkit will also be of immense value to policy makers in provincial and national governments as well as regional economic institutions, for several reasons: • Corridors affect the space economy of countries; they are best developed with clear estimates of the spatial impacts that can be expected. • A corridor system has multiple components, including infrastructure (roads, railways, ports), transport and logistics services, and regulations; it is important to appreciate the linkages between them, particularly as the overall performance of a corridor is determined by the weakest component. • Many parties with varying interests and motivations have a stake in corridor development. The Toolkit argues for their full participation in corridor development processes and operations. The best functioning modern corridors in the world did not happen by accident; they are often the results of coordinated development and cooperation over many years. The general principles outlined in this Toolkit should help project teams, government officials, logistics service providers, and the trade community to better appreciate both the importance of good corridor project design and the challenges of, and possibilities from, improving corridor performance. -
Publication
Eurasian Cities : New Realities along the Silk Road
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-09-07)Eurasian cities, unique in the global spatial landscape, were part of the world's largest experiment in urban development. The challenges they now face because of their history offer valuable lessons to urban planners and policy makers across the world from places that are still urbanizing to those already urbanized. More than three-quarters of the built environment in Eurasian cities was developed after 1945 in a centralized fashion. Central planners could implement whatever they considered good practice planning solutions, and Eurasia's cities became their drawing boards. The central planners got a lot right easy access to public transportation, district heating networks, almost universal access to water systems, and socially integrated neighborhoods. At the same time, they failed to acknowledge the importance of markets and individual choice in shaping sustainable and congenial places for people to live in. From a spatial point of view, it became clear that many Eurasian cities were developed in places where they should not have been. To populate sparsely inhabited territory, Soviet planners pushed urban development toward the heart of Siberia. Many of the resulting cities had no rural hinterland to rely on for daily food needs and had to depend on subsidized goods and services. Many Eurasian cities face an overdeveloped public service infrastructure that is hard to maintain and upgrade. Facing an economic downturn in the 1990s and lacking experience in decentralized urban management, many local authorities struggled to run these services. Public transport ridership fell in most cities, with more people commuting in private vehicles. Recycling networks disappeared, and soaring consumption overwhelmed solid waste management systems. District heating systems became large energy sieves hard to run and maintain without subsidies. Plaguing water systems are large shares of nonrevenue water, and low tariffs do not ensure the cost recovery needed for upgrades and repairs. This book discusses all five of these issues rethinking, planning, connecting, greening, and financing in more detail. It seeks to analyze the key challenges created by central planning, outline how these challenges were addressed in the transition years, and identify some steps Eurasian cities should take to chart a sustainable development path for themselves. The book also shows how some of the most progressive cities in the region have been tackling these problems and, in doing so, shedding the last vestiges of the socialist economy. -
Publication
Integrating Border Regions : Connectivity and Competitiveness in South Asia
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-07)Deeper regional integration can be beneficial especially for regions along international borders. It can open up new markets on opposite sides of borders and give consumers wider access to cheaper goods. This paper uses data from five contiguous districts of India, Nepal, and Bangladesh in the northeast of the subcontinent to measure the degrees of trade complementarity between districts. The paper illustrates that the regions are underexploiting the potential of intraregional commerce. Price wedges of up to 90 percent in some important consumption products along with measures of complementarity between households' production and consumption suggest the potential for relatively large gains from deeper trade integration. Furthermore, an examination of a specific supply chain of tea highlights factors that help industries scale up, aided by institutions such as an organized auction and decent physical and legal infrastructure. However, districts alike in geography but located across international boundaries face different development prospects, suggesting that gains from reduced "thickness of borders" would not accrue automatically. Much rests on developing intrinsic industry competitiveness at home, including the reform of regulatory and business practices and infrastructural bottlenecks that prevent agglomeration of local economies. -
Publication
Reviving Trade Routes : Evidence from the Maputo Corridor
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-11)Most trade moves along a few high-density routes: the corridors. Improving their performance has emerged as a necessary ingredient for growth and integration into the regional and global economy. In Africa, this is recognized at the continental level, where program for infrastructure development in Africa (PIDA) has identified 42 corridors that should form a core network for regional integration and global connectivity. Several distinctive features appear to be necessary conditions for a successful corridor, namely (i) a combination of public and private investments to improve infrastructure, (ii) an institutional framework to promote and facilitate coordination, (iii) a focus on operational efficiency of the logistics services and infrastructure, and (iv) a proven economic potential. Reviewing the experience of an apparently successful corridor can help one learn the optimal mix and trade-offs among the ingredients and enable replication of success on other corridors. The lessons from the Maputo corridor can help the regional economic communities (REC), countries, corridor users, and development partners to better focus their corridor strategies to maximize economic growth. The present work focuses on three aspects of its revival: corridors as enablers of trade and economic development; improvement of logistics through investments and reforms; institutional framework adapted according to objectives. -
Publication
The Security and Trade Facilitation Nexus: Options for South Asian Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-07)Depending on the nature of the threat and the type of transaction and transport, the ability to profile risk and the type of potential risk-mitigation intervention will be different. If the predominant risk is economic (undervaluation, for instance), a certain set of transactional data can help profile and identify high-risk targets. In such cases, physical inspection responses will be not be as effective as conducting post-transaction auditing as the main compliance strategy. Supply-chain security is based on the understanding that industry has an equally strong financial interest in the security and visibility of goods, and is generally better placed to recognize what is normal behavior as goods move through the supply chain. Adoption of a contemporary risk-based regulatory compliance framework vastly improves an institution’s overall ability to ensure security while delivering improved levels of facilitation. -
Publication
The Security and Trade Facilitation Nexus: International Trends and Practices
(World Bank, Washington, DCB, 2015-05)Improving levels of trade facilitation is one of the remaining challenges to enhancing connectivity and trade growth in South Asia, but border and internal security concerns are often perceived as a barrier to implementing key reforms. Security is a legitimate issue for South Asian nations. But there needs to be a balance to achieve the optimum level of security without restricting trade and damaging a nation’s ‘economic’ security. Even border management agencies employing a ‘100 percent’ intervention policy does not have the resources to examine every package. The challenge is to focus security resources to target transactions of highest risk, using sophisticated analysis of transaction data and maintaining visibility and integrity of supply chains. After the 9/11 attacks, several governments had to address the challenge of securing their national borders and protecting their international supply chains against terrorist threats. There is concern that poor border security risks the trafficking of weapons or drugs, entry of terrorists or their means of support, or other threats. Following the attacks, many jurisdictions emphasized more intervention and an increased regulatory burden on international trade. However, added emphasis on security need not become a barrier to international trade or render trade uncompetitive. Based on several case studies, this note synthesizes some principles that can be adopted to govern the balance between managing security risks and facilitating trade.