Harare — Government has signed out the Beitbridge-Chirundu toll road as a concession to a foreign consortium without going to tender to pave way for the dualisation and toll-gating of Zimbabwe's busiest road at an estimated cost of US$1 billion.

It is the second backstage deal after the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Expressway that was contracted out to a Ukrainian investment company last year and subsequently sub-contracted to an unknown South African construction company at a price local contractors claim was too high.

Sources named investors from China, South Korea and South Africa as front-runners for the country's largest construction contract to date.

Transport and Infrastructure Development Minister, Nicholas Goche, told The Financial Gazette that the project was still "at the stage of interest" and would be implemented as a Build Operate Transfer partnership arrangement with a statutory body.

"It is still at the stage of interest," Goche said. "It is the road that has attracted overwhelming interest so far.

"Discussions are still taking place. We are still evaluating the suitors' bids."

Sources confirmed that the contractor would be announced "very soon."

The road, which exists as two trunks -- the Beitbridge-Harare road and the Harare-Chirundu road -- is southern Africa's busiest inland trade route linking South Africa's main ports of Durban and Cape Town to Zambia, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Foreign contractors prioritised

Theresa Makone, the Minister of Public Works, which chairs the infrastructure cluster under the Short Term Emergency Recovery Programme, says priority for all large-scale infrastructure projects will be given to foreign contractors as many local contractors are currently undercapitalised.

"Priority will be given to contractors outside our borders who have the capacity, but local contractors will be drawn in as partners," Makone said. "They will be sub-contracted."

The outward-looking policy has infuriated the local construction industry, which feels unfairly sidelined in key construction projects that carried the hope of local contractors and manufacturers of construction materials after a decade of construction stagnation.

Other toll roads earmarked for private concessioning include Harare-Bulawayo, Harare-Mutare, Bulawayo-Victoria Falls and the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Expressway linking the Harare International Airport to the city centre.

The roads form the spine of a regional trunk road network, which runs along six spatial development initiatives, namely the Maputo corridor, the Beira Corridor, the Trans-Limpopo Development Corridor, the Nacala corridor, the Trans-Caprivi corridor and the North-South corridor project

So far the largest transport infrastructure project in Africa to be jointly implemented by the Common Market for East and Southern Africa, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community, the North-South corridor aims to establish a seamless Cape to Cairo trade route through eight anchor country links, including Zimbabwe.

Road fund

The government plans to concession out all urban roads to private operators under the "user pays" principle of the SADC's Protocol on Transport, Communications and Meteorology, and concentrate on rural road development.

Under the transport infrastructure provision model, the government will remain the project owner, but contract routes to concessionaires, who will upgrade, toll-gate, maintain and operate the roads on behalf of the government for a period specified in the concession.

The concessionaires have the taxing authority to collect tolls, which have been gazetted by the government.

Rudimentary toll gates were commissioned last Saturday.

The mechanism will be buttressed by a road fund, recently set up and administered by the Zimbabwe National Roads Authority, to finance rural road development and maintenance.

The purse will be used to support three road authorities, namely the Department of State Roads, rural urban councils and the District Development Fund.