Beitbridge is one of the busiest border posts in the SADC economic region, handling more than 12,000 travellers and 3,500 vehicles a day in the festive season.
Annually, this amounts to four million people, one million vehicles and millions of tons of freight.
But with traffic flows hitting record levels in recent years, facilities at the Post have proved woefully inadequate.
It can take up to four hours to transit the Post with the delays particularly worse during peak holiday periods.
“The BBP has long been identified as a major bottleneck in the smooth flow of traffic along the North-South Corridor (NSC) which links South Africa to Zimbabwe, Northern Mozambique, Eastern Botswana, Zambia, the DRC and Malawi. Alleviating this bottleneck is an imperative for improved regional economic integration and development,” Ziyaad Sarang, Investment Banking head of Infrastructure Finance at Standard Bank said in a statement on Wednesday.
“To this end the Government of Zimbabwe is pursuing the objective of reducing the time to transit and the number of stops incurred in a cross border process.”
Modelled along the lines of the One-Stop concept implemented successfully at the Chirundu Border Post between Zimbabwe and Zambia the upgrade project is a Build-Operate-Transfer project under which the promoters will run the facility for 15 years to recoup costs and a profit before handing it back to the authorities.
The promoters will recover their investment through revenue from toll fares charged to travellers and transporters using the upgraded border post infrastructure and related services.
Sarang said the upgrade underlines the strategic importance of the border post to Zimbabwe and the wider region.
* New Zimbabwe.com
