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New Zimbabwe, SA border post needed

by Staff reporter
17 Dec 2015 at 13:09hrs | Views
A solution to the congestion that usually characterises southern Africa's busiest inland border, the Beitbridge Border Post, especially during the festive season, is to open another entry point between Zimbabwe and South Africa, a senior tax advisor has said.

Beitbridge caters for at least 25 000 travellers and 10 000 cars during the festive season, with the situation expected to be no different this year as the holiday season sets in.

Ramec Masaire, an executive director and business tax services official at Ernest & Young, told captains of industry and commerce during a tax seminar and 2016 National Budget review meeting here that it was high time government considered engaging South Africa on the possibility of opening an additional port of entry to ease challenges caused by the huge volume of traffic and travellers passing through Beitbridge.

Masaire said it was regrettable that despite South Africa being Zimbabwe's biggest trading partner, there was just one port of entry between the two countries apart from the international airports.

In comparison with neighbouring Botswana, there are three ports of entry between Zimbabwe and Botswana namely Plumtree/Ramokgwebana, Maitengwe and Mphoengs/Matsiloje and the same applies to Zambia and Mozambique which both have more than one border post each with Zimbabwe.

Plans mooted some years ago to establish a one-stop border post in Beitbridge to ease congestion are progressing at a snail's space.

Masaire said with Finance and Economic Development Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, having reviewed traveller's rebate from US$300 to US$200 per month with effect from January 1, 2016, congestion was likely to worsen at Beitbridge as that means more people will have to queue to pay duty on almost everything.

Traveller's rebate for daily shoppers who live in areas close to the borders was also slashed from US$50 to US$10.

"The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority has to come up with modalities of how they are going to do it, otherwise this is going to create problems, either corruption or congestion," said Masaire.

Another tax expert, Sifelani Nhliziyo, said the US$50 rebate on daily shoppers had weaknesses, arguing the downward review was justified.

"If you look at it, technically, it was a big weakness in that US$50 per day multiplied by 30 days in a month it ends up being more than the US$300," he explained.

Source - fingaz