Thupeyo Muleya — The new state-of-the-art Beitbridge Border Post promises to revolutionise trade and travel between Zimbabwe, her neighbours and the international community, ably aided by its cutting-edge technology, expanded capacity, and enhanced security features.
The US$300 million-dollar project has transformed the critical gateway, reducing congestion and time needed to clear both cargo and travellers, which had become a major bottleneck to trade and movement of people in the SADC region.
After so many years of bungled immigration challenges, the New Dispensation through a robust Public Private Partnership (PPP) with the Zimborders Consortium has turned a new leaf at the Beitbridge Border Post.
The port of entry is the nexus of trade and travel for citizens of Malawi, Angola, DRC, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The entry also services tourists coming by road from the international community through South Africa.
With three new terminals catering for freight, bus, pedestrians and private vehicles traffic, people now spend less time at the border, true to the mantra that "Zimbabwe is now open for business".
Annually the border processes close to 200 000 commercial trucks and over seven million travellers. Additionally, it now has the capacity to carry over 400 buses, and 4000 light vehicles on any given day.
Prior to the latest development before 2022, the facility had become a nightmare for many border users and some had even started to move to other less busy ports to avoid the chaos at the border where services were being conducted from containers and one admin block.
Cargo would take anything from 24 hours to 72 hours to pass through but now that has changed with border officials now able to clear 60 percent of all commercial cargo arriving at the border in under three hours.
Following its completion, the border has been attracting a number of visitors on either tourism or study visits from across the world.
The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority's (ZIMRA) Commissioner for Customs, Mr Batsirai Chadzingwa said the border has been attracting a lot of attention from many stakeholders within the region and the African continent.
"So far President Mnangagwa has hosted his South African counterpart President Cyril Ramaphosa whose government intends to modernise its border infrastructure at six ports of entries in an almost similar fashion," he said.
"We have also played host to a delegation from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA), South African Revenue Service (SARS), Zambian Ministry of Industry, a delegation from Mozambique and learners from different schools."
Last week, Zimbabwe hosted a delegation from the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) secretariat carrying out a study visit at the transformed Beitbridge Border Post.
The delegation was led by Mr Alcides Monteiro, senior programme officer for customs and the task manager of the European Union and SADC Trade Facilitation Programme engaged border agencies to assess progress in terms of the full implementation of the protocols.
Other team members included, Mr Ally Alexander Mwangolombe programme officer - Customs Procedures and Alberto Alexandre programme officer-Capacity Building, Directorate of Finance Investment and Customs (FIC).
According to Mr Monteiro, the team also made numerous visits to other border posts within the region where a lot of ground work had been covered in terms of the improvement of infrastructure, coordinated border management and efficiency management systems.
He said the US$300 million-dollar project was a critical gateway to seven member states in the Sadc region and hence the visit. The team also wanted to appreciate the developments on the ground that the Government had done.
"This mission is in the context of advancing the regional integration agenda. Over the years since we started to implement the Sadc treaty in the area we realised that there is need to implement the trade facilitation instrument," said Mr Montiero.
"This trade facilitation instrument is meant to support and consolidate Sadc's development thrust that began around 2008.
"After five years of the implementation of the Sadc free trade areas, there was a decision from the Ministerial task force on regional integration where they identified key border posts in the region to implement some measures including the upgrading of the border posts, the one stop border post concept, coordinated border management concept and to extend hours of operation to cater for the volume of trade in the region".
He continued; "After 13 years of that decision which was made in 2013, we are here to assess how far member states have gone to implement those decisions in particular at Beitbridge Border Post which is a very important border post in the region".
He said the team was expecting during the study visit to see what was in place and so that they may report back to the cluster of ministers under the ministerial task force on the developments at Beitbridge.
The ministerial task team includes the Ministers of Finance and Investments, Infrastructure Development and Foreign Affairs in Sadc.
So far, he said, from the presentations from various border agencies at Beitbridge it was clear that most of the decisions were already observed and complied with.
He said the team was impressed with the PPP model between the Zimbabwe government and the Zimborders Consortium and that they will recommend that it be replicated in the upgrading of selected border posts within the region.
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Zimborders Consortium general manager, Mr Nqobile Ncube said the PPP concession was valid for 17 and half years.
Under which period, the consortium will maintain the infrastructure and collect its investment through border user fees and hand over the infrastructure to the Government at the end of the concession.
"This project conceived from the Sadc treaty began in 2016 and civil works after 2017," said Mr Ncube.
"There was a realisation that the previous infrastructure here had been done around 1992 and the volume of trade and human movement increased post South Africa's independence in 1994.
So, the Zimbabwean took note of the challenges with limited infrastructure and hence they sought to solve these through a public private partnership".
He said the border had been designed to accommodate the envisaged One Stop Border Post concept between Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Mr Ncube said the border modernisation had come with five major port facility to support its operation which includes, the building of 220 border staff houses, a 11,4-mega litres water reservoir, a new sewer oxidation dam, an animal plant and quarantine centre with several laboratories and a fire station all within the Beitbridge town.
