Zimbabwe milks cross-border truckers

The authorities in Zimbabwe are intent on making so much foreign exchange out of cross-border truckers that they are just costing them out of business, according to John Wheadon, MD of Falcongate Logistics. “The Zimbabweans are killing us. They have so many fees, charges, tolls and taxes that you need to keep a US dollar account in Zimbabwe just to supply your drivers with enough cash to get across the border,” he said. “And they are incredibly inventive in finding all sorts of new ways to make more money out of truckers.” They make an impressive list, and Wheadon released details of just some of them. They include: Trucktrailer annual commercial vehicle guarantees (CVGs) (US$100 per rig); toll fees for transit (US$150 each way); Environmental Management Agency (EMA) fees (US$60 per product); carbon tax (US$30 per month); port health charges (US$30); agricultural fee (US$20); new monthly insurance from Zimra (US$60); gate pass (US$28 each way) – even a BURCO customs documentation processing fee for handling all this paperwork they’ve created (US$6 each way). “So,” said Wheadon, “if I go to Malawi with a cargo of syfermox, and return with tobacco, the US dollar outlay in Zimbabwe alone will be US$478. “They’ve also just made all private company insurance policies null and void, and now you can only get monthly insurance through Zimra (the country’s customs authority). That was US$15 000 of fully pre-paid annual insurance policies for my vehicles down the drain.” Another of Wheadon’s latest gripes is the list of transit products now covered under Zimbabwe’s EMA. “Effective from July 15,” he told FTW, “the list has now doubled in size, and covers 135 chemical products that EMA has classified as hazardous substances. The new items include fertilisers amongst many other things.” And an example of the effect of this? “We move 1 000-tons a month of non-hazardous syfermox (magnesium oxide) overborder into Malawi,” said Wheadon. “It is not a common product, and there’s only one place in the world this comes from - that’s SA. And it’s now magically appeared on the new list. “To choose that specific item, they must have gone through all transit border documentation for this year, and calculated just how much extra foreign exchange they could make out of including that on the EMA list.” These transit fees for “dangerous” goods have also met with the unfavourable attention of the Road Freight Association (RFA) as long as a year ago – and before this latest expansion of the product list. At the time, technical and operations manager, Gavin Kelly, told us that these fees had been put on hold during 2008. “But,” he added, “according to Statutory Instrument 77 of 2009 which was published on May 29, and refers to section 140 of the Environmental Management Act (Chapter 20:27), the fees will now be charged on all dangerous goods loads transiting Zimbabwe.” And, although the original legislation (SI 12 of 2007) classified chemicals in three groups of severity (green, amber and red), Kelly said that it was also decided that the official inspecting the vehicle and receiving the transit fee could change the classification of a chemical if he felt it was more dangerous than originally classified. “The obvious implication is that we would in all likelihood always pay the maximum fee (US$60 per product) provided for,” he added. The RFA took this matter up with the Zimbabwe ministries of transport and trade and industry last June, but no response has been forthcoming. Kelly also told us that it is now due to come up before the Southern African Development Community (SADC) very shortly. But he expected that the issue was likely to end up being “file thirteened” there as well.