Zimborders has modernised Beit-Bridge border and now charges truckers a toll to use the faster crossing.
The Cross-Border Road Transport Agency (C-BRTA) has released the latest fees for the six permits it issues to allow drivers of various vehicles to transport passengers or loads across borders in South Africa and neighbouring countries.
The C-BRTA offers the temporary as well as long-term permits for passenger and freight road transport operators in the following categories:
- Goods permits
- Bus passenger permits
- Taxi passenger permits
- Tourist passenger permits
- Organised group permits
- Cabotage permits
An application fee and an issuing fee are payable has to be paid for each country in which the applicant wishes to pick up or deliver goods or passengers, excluding Tourist Applications.
Applications can be submitted online or in-person at the C-BRTA offices in Eco Park, Centurion, for processing and approval. Applicants may pay for permits in cash at the C-BRTA offices, or use bank debit cards, credit cards and bank-guaranteed cheques made out to the C-BRTA. The new fees are applicable from 1 April 2024.
New toll fees at Beitbrdige
Having paid a hefty sum for a cross-border permit does not guarantee quick crossings at busy border posts, as anyone at the Lebombo border crossing can testify.
One bit of good news amid all this expensive red-tape is that Beit Bridge is no longer the 10-km queue that drivers suffered in December 2023, this after toll-gate operator Zimborders has finished the first phase to speed up the flow of trucks over the Limpopo River.
While the first phase focus on trucks, the second phase, set to be completed in May 2025, will fast-track buses through the border. The third and final phase will smooth the way for passenger cars, scheduled for completion in December 2025. The three phases are part of a R14-billion, 17-year Built-Operate-Transfer contract with the Zimbabwe government.
To recoup the R14 billion, the Cape Town-based company Zimborders charges truck drivers the following toll fees:
• Goods vehicles, such as rigid containers and trucks, pay ZAR2,900;
• Abnormal load vehicles carrying machinery are charged ZAR4,965;
• Heavy vehicles, such as trucks and buses, pay ZAR1,660.
End borders to start prosperity
On its website, Zimborders prides itself in “optimizing border effciencies and revenue collection for government”.
While all drivers are grateful that someone is finally doing the job government officials have so dismally failed to do at Beit Bridge, SA Trucker has to ask why businesses have to pay yet another hidden tax via these new tolls fees now levied by Zimborders?
Instead of taxing transport businesses to death, SA Trucker suggests governments in southern Africa can increase their tax-bases exponentially if they revive the African Union’s stated goal in 1991, namely to set up eight African Economic Communities in Africa.
In the south, this plan calls for Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe to regionally integrate into an economic community by allowing free movement of people, goods and capital across the region.
Doing away with the colonial-era borders that are currently hampering businesses will give the millions of eager entrepreneurs in the region the freedom they need to add value and grow prosperity from the grassroots up.
