K. Broersma

"What Role could the Bicycle Play in developing Countries ?"

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FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS

Financial constraints ( which must be recognised at an early stage ) fall into 2 categories:

1. Available finance for provision of tranoport facilities,
2. Available spending power of the population to use such facilities.

The first category requires a review of the system of funding transportation projects; the aim should be to get crude estimates of possible annual expenditure over the next 5-10 years in respect to capital projects, operation and maintenance. Bicycling-facilities, where an "article-in-demand", are clearely less of a financial risk than motorway-like high???? would be. They are relatively (very) cheap to construct, operate and maintain. But of course they are only feasible where the demand is sufficient. Therefore an investigation of the extent and location of the "cyclist-market" is essential.

The second category of financial constraints - the ability of the populace to pay for the use of transport facilities - has been overlooked in many studies in developing countries. Very little information is available on the size of the section of tbe urban ("non-expatriate") community that cannot afford any of the forms of transport available or what proportion of their total income the various income groups spend on transport. In tho rural areas -with even lower incomes- the access to any form of transport will most probably be worse. "Two shillings" a day - fairly typical for two busrides a day (short to medium dictances) - represents 10% of an income of 300 Kenian Pounds per year. Many of the poorer wage earners earn - and will in the future earn considerably less than that, as can be seen from the table below, showing an estimated householdincome distribution for Nairobi around the year 2000.

Household income	% of population
	abs.	cum.
No income	35	35
Low income (1-199P.)	20	55
Low/middle inc.(200-399P.)	26	81
Middle/high inc.(400-999P.)	12	93
High income (1000+ P.)	7	100

Could these poor households then afford a bicycle, which might be adequately competitive on the urban and shorter rural travel distances, assuming that the topographical conditions are not prohibitive? Only if the purchasing price is fairly low, in tbe order of l year-expenditure on public transport, I would guess. And only if financing-facilities would be provided through employers (in urban areas) or cooporatives (in rural areas). Can Bicycles be - locally - produced for such a price that the low income masses can "reach" them? A question to be answered by the industry in the first place.