{"id":5268,"date":"2012-11-05T23:33:29","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T23:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/?p=5268"},"modified":"2012-11-05T23:36:11","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T23:36:11","slug":"northern-distribution-network-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/northern-distribution-network-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Distribution Network corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is a fascinating if somewhat depressing read: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opensocietyfoundations.org\/reports\/new-silk-road-and-northern-distribution-network-golden-road-central-asian-trade-reform\">The New Silk Road and the Northern Distribution Network: A Golden Road to Central Asian Trade Reform?<\/a> <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The New Silk Road and the Northern Distribution Network is a constructive assessment of the conditions and challenges facing this effort that asks and answers the following questions: <\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Is the Northern Distribution network incentivizing regional cooperation and border reforms?\n<li>Is the Northern Distribution Network helping to fight corruption in Central Asia?\n<li>Has the Northern Distribution Network made transhipment through Central Asia more efficient?\n<li>Are ordinary Central Asian citizens benefitting from Northern Distribution Network trade?\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I suspect you can guess the answers&#8230; you know what they say about the answer to a headline phrased as a question always being &#8220;no&#8221;?  <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.opensocietyfoundations.org\/voices\/new-silk-road-where-will-it-lead\">The New Silk Road: Where Will It Lead<\/a> is an interview with the author, Graham Lee. The report itself has lots of numbers for freight transport volumes and costs, which might be of interest to some readers.<\/p>\n<p>In summary, the money being spend on the Northern Distribution Network is all disappearing into a pit of corruption, with lots of people on the take. <\/p>\n<p>The report suggests that the various state railways are doing nicely out of the NDN traffic. I guess that if the freight needs to be moved, railways are more efficient in technical terms. But where is all the money they are getting going &#8211; funding strategic infrastructure investments and shiny new trains, disappearing off into general government funds, or into someone&#8217;s back pocket?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a fascinating if somewhat depressing read: The New Silk Road and the Northern Distribution Network: A Golden Road to Central Asian Trade Reform? The New Silk Road and the Northern Distribution Network is a constructive assessment of the conditions and challenges facing this effort that asks and answers the following questions: Is the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[93,127,213,200],"class_list":["post-5268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","tag-kazakhstan","tag-ndn","tag-takjikistan","tag-uzbekistan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5268"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5273,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5268\/revisions\/5273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}