Reducing bureaucracy and simplifying procedures at borders, with a view to making national transport corridors more competitive and efficient, are now priorities for the Government.
It is in this context that the Minister of Transport and Communications (MTC), Janfar Abdulai, quoted by Notícias, urged customs, migration, port authorities and other national entities involved in the transit of goods to innovate to make the transit of goods at borders more flexible.
Janfar Abdulai, who was speaking in Maputo at the opening of the Seventh Maputo Port Conference, an event that brought together stakeholders in the area of logistics and international trade, acknowledged that the way to achieve this objective is by integrating the different sectors involved in international trade into a single management system.
“We continue working towards the materialization of the dream of having a single border in Ressano Garcia, in the district of Moamba, Maputo province,” he said.
Projections advanced just yesterday indicate that the Port of Maputo intends to increase the amount of cargo handled from the current 22.3 to 54 million tons in 2043, a fact that, according to the minister, cannot be done by overloading the national road infrastructure.
“We encouraged the completion of the works for the mitigation of similar problem on the National Road Number Four (EN4), which allowed the improvement of the ratios between road and rail cargo,” he said.
He explained that in 2019 the Port of Maputo received only 15% of rail cargo and that today handling via rail totals almost 30% of the total cargo transported.
On the occasion, Janfar also urged the concessionaires of the Port of Maputo to take into consideration, in the implementation of their new master plan, road transitability so that the development of the Maputo Corridor is effectively sustainable.
“We are aware that road volumes will also increase, but we must be in a position, for example, to respond to the recent decision to keep the Ressano Garcia border open 24 hours,” he said.
According to him, at the moment, since the Ressano Garcia border was opened 24 hours a day, the Port of Maputo received an average of 104 trucks in the period between 10pm and 6am, “which is a clear indication of the potential of this measure”.
The Minister of Transport and Communications also appealed to the Trans African Concession (TRAC) to encourage users to better exploit the hours of less congestion, in order to ensure greater safety in the circulation on the EN4.
