Maputo — The building of the one-stop border post between Mozambique and South Africa at Ressano Garcia is months behind schedule, and the blame is being put at the door of the international financial crisis.

When the agreement on the project was signed in September 2007, it was budgeted at 130 million US dollars. Of this sum, Mozambique was to contribute 30 million dollars, and South African was to contribute the rest - which would have been 600 million rands at the time.

Under the initial timetable, work was to have begun in May 2008, and the new border post would have been ready in 2010, in time for the large flows of tourists expected to visit the region for the Football World Cup scheduled to be held in South Africa that year.

The project had three components - the commercial Border (at kilometre four, on the Mozambican side), the rail border (at Komatipoort, inside South Africa), and the tourist border (along the line of the frontier).

However, according to the Mozambican Minister of Public Works, Felicio Zacarias, the costs of the project are likely to rise, due to the effects of the world financial crisis. Nonetheless, he insisted that the undertaking will go ahead, because both governments remain committed to it.

"Right now, we don't know how much the rise in cost will be. But it will increase, that's true", said Zacarias, speaking to reporters on Friday, after a meeting in Komatipoort, with a delegation headed by his South African counterpart, Geoff Doidge, held to analyse the current state of the project.

Before the meeting got under way, Doidge admitted that the adverse economic climate has affected plans for the border post. "We have to sit down and analyse a viable way of continuing the project so that we achieve the goal of decongesting the border, particularly during the end of year and Easter periods", he said.

The Mozambican general coordinator of the project, Berta Macamo, explained that, apart from the effects of the international crisis, the South African government's expenditure on the general elections held in April and on preparations for the World Cup have forced a cut in the allocation of funds to the border post from 600 to 366 million rands (to be disbursed in five instalments.)

The project will thus be built in phases, and Mozambique has promised to complete its part of the job at the commercial border at Kilometre Four. For its part, South Africa says it will complete work on the pedestrian border crossing currently under way on its side of the frontier.

Technical teams from the two countries are working together on the project - but there may be changes in personnel on the South African side since responsibility for the project has been transferred from the Finance Ministry to the Ministry of Public Works.

Macamo said that public tenders have been launched for the environmental impact assessment of the project, and for certifying that the area it covers is free of land mines.

A further tender has been launched for demarcating the area where the 51 households that have to be moved on the Mozambican side of the border will be resettled. Some public buildings, such as a health post and a water tank, may also have to be moved to make way for the new border post.

Initially, resettlement of the people affected by the project was budgeted at 87 million meticais (about 3.3 million dollars), but the cost may have risen.

On Friday, the two ministers also visited the resettlement area, which is currently just a bare site, where nothing has yet been built.