Martin Rushmere
THE MAIN shareholder in a planned new container park in Mutare has strongly denied suggestions that the venture is aimed at capturing the market from the two main centres of Bulawayo and Harare.
Chris Donald, managing director of GMS (formerly Green's Motor Services), told FTW in Harare: The park is designed entirely to cater for exporters and importers in the eastern part of Zimbabwe Ñ coffee, tea, timber and the like. There has never been any intention of trying to make an arrangement to force all goods going through Beira to come to Mutare and be repacked.
Those sort of suggestions are absolute nonsense, he says.
He points out that the original park of 120 containers has become too small. You can hardly move in there when it's full. The new one will have capacity for 600TEU containers.
Development of the new area has been put on hold because Zimbabwe's economy has crashed. Very few exports and imports are going through Mutare.
The tobacco sales season, scheduled to open next month, will undoubtedly increase traffic but any significant improvement will depend on an end to the political and economic crisis, which in turn partly depends on an end to the fixed exchange rate.
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