Border crossing across Southern Africa continues to hamper the tempo of road freight movement, with transits between South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana flagged as prominent problem areas in a Cargo Movement Update report released earlier this week.
According to the report compiled by the South African Association of Freight Forwarders and Business Unity SA, “the median border crossing times at South African borders increased by two-and-a-half hours”.
On average, trucks idled for more than 14 hours as they waited to pass through some of the country’s borders.
Compared with waiting time recorded the week prior, it heralded a 23% increase in time spent at various crossings as operators waited to continue on their regional journeys.
Contrasting sharply with this was the greater SADC region, excluding South Africa, where queueing time decreased by about 45 minutes, averaging more than nine hours.
Week-on-week (w-o-w) this translated into a dwell-time decrease of 9%.
On the whole, it means SADC road freight trade was about three times faster according to w-o-w queueing time data, and by about 30 minutes in terms of actual transfer time.
Borders that took a day or more to clear were Beitbridge (SA-Zimbabwe), Groblersbrug (SA-Botswana), and Kasumbalesa (Zambia-DRC) – in other words, the usual culprits.
Katima Mulilo, Namibia’s panhandle border with Zambia, experienced massive delays, taking about four days to clear.
In other regional road freight developments, the report noted that the Zambia Revenue Authority had announced that pre-clearing of all goods has become mandatory, that a scanning issue compounded cargo processing at Beitbridge, and that movement at South Africa’s Lebombo border with Mozambique had experienced problems due to police batch-releasing trucks.
