Road Funds, User Charges, and Taxes

Insufficient or uncertain budgetary allocations to road maintenance have resulted in road deterioration that has significantly increased production and transport costs in many coun-tries. To avoid this problem, highway professionals advocate the establishment of dedi-cated road funds, managed by independent road boards made up of user representatives. The road boards would have the power to determine both the level of charges for road use and the level of expenditure on road maintenance. By contrast, macroeconomists and public finance specialists have tended to resist the establishment of dedicated road funds. They argue that road funds reduce fiscal flexibility, do not adequately address problems associated with the provision of public goods or the internalization of externalities, and often are not well managed. In general, there are two long-term institutional options for reconciling fiscal prudence with asset maintenance: a road agency that is operated commercially (subject to the nor-mal oversight of behavior accorded to privatized monopolies), or a reformed and well-functioning budget process. This article argues that road funds must be viewed as a provi-sional, case-specific intermediate step in the direction of one of the long-term solutions. The role and nature of road funds should be assessed not on general principles but on a case-by-case basis through the analysis of likely micro- and macroeconomic effects. The article recommends indicators for use in specific cases to determine whether a road fund should be introduced, continued, or abolished. Spending on roads accounts for between 0.5 and 10 percent of public expenditure and between 10 and 20 percent of the development budget in many countries. Ex-penditures on road construction and rehabilitation, which are usually classified as capital expenditures, financed through borrowing and subsequent debt servicing, are not discussed in this paper. This article focuses on expenditures for periodic mainte-nance, routine maintenance, and operational management of roads. These costs are usually treated as current expenditures financed through annually budgeted alloca-tions from the central treasury