GCC Infrastructure Roads & Railways - Markaz Report

Kuwait Financial Centre "Markaz" has released its latest infrastructure report focusing on the roads and railways sector in the GCC. The authors of the report M.R. Raghu and Amrith Mukkamala state that the GCC region has historically focused its transportation investments in building roadways. This has ensured high quality of roads across most of the GCC countries. The paved roads as a percentage of total roads in most of the GCC countries is close to 100% as compared to other emerging countries average which is below 75%.

This can be mainly attributed to the significantly higher density of motor vehicles per kilometer of road in some of the GCC countries as compared to the BRIC peers. Among the six GCC countries four countries - UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain & Qatar have significantly higher traffic density in comparison to rest of the countries.

Also, the higher density of vehicles is because of the low road density. Other than Bahrain, the rest of the countries in the GCC have significantly low levels of road density. Majority of the countries in the GCC fare poorly when compared to developed nations also. US and United Kingdom have a road density of 0.68 and 1.72 respectively compared to say Saudi Arabia which is at 0.10.