New Swazi facility will speed up Durban-bound cargo

JAMES HALL
MBABANE - New industrial activity at the southern border town Lavumisa will shorten road transport times to the port of Durban for companies locating there.
About 90 minutes will be shaved off the usual trip from the Matsapha Industrial Estate, where the country’s manufacturing is currently concentrated outside Manzini in central Swaziland. Even more time will be saved if local companies can coordinate with customs agents, say developers of the kingdom’s newest industrial park.
Government is building factory shells in the hope that manufacturing activity will boost the under-developed region where unemployment is high and AIDS and drought have devastated the livelihoods of farmers.
King Mswati made it a point of travelling down south last week to open a manufacturing plant, and to promote investment in a country he no longer calls Swaziland, but “the kingdom of eSwatini.”
Of interest to road transport companies that may wish to open branches in the southern region, the king committed government to enhance road infrastructure and create a legal framework more accommodating to business investors.
“A new highway connecting the southern region with Mbabane and Manzini is now completed, but the region’s secondary road system is antiquated and inadequate,” the manager of a Matsapha-based trucking company told FTW.