Reported By Catherine Tembo
Ministry of Trade has said the country has made tremendous strides in increasing revenue collection from MK1 billion per month to Mk3billion since the Mwami One-Stop Border Post (OSBP) was opened.
The Mwami OSBP was commissioned by the President of the Republic of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema and the President of the Republic of Malawi, Dr. Lazarus Chakwera on December 7 2022.
In an interview with this reporter, Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Trade, Christina Zakeyo said the revenue boost is a significant milestone in as far as trade is concerned.
She said the Mwami border has managed to reduce costs of doing business with transporters, therefore saving about MK1.2 million in demurrage costs, which was previously transferred to transporters.
She further said the opening of the Mwami border has made the work easier as time spent at the border has been reduced from 8 days to 48 hours.
“For us as Ministry we play a very facilitatory role, and this particular project, which is by the COMESA, we see it as a game changer in the sense that there are a quite number of improvements that have been done at the border,” she explained
Zakeyo further revealed that plans are underway to start a pilot of Electronic Certificate of Origin by the end of November this year and Malawi is one of the 23 member states of COMESA to embark on this initiative.
“We are optimistic that the Electronic Certificate of Origins will help to speed up the work at the facility as everything will no longer be done manually,” She explained
Station Manager at Mwami Border Post Tapiwa Mzunga said despite the tremendous progress, the country’s exports have declined compared to the volumes that are imported stressing that this year’s has not been able to produce more due to climatic weather conditions.
“We are only exporting Soya pieces chicken pieces, but when the country has received enough rains, they normally export more farm produce such as soya and groundnuts but this year we did not export that farm produce”, Mzunga explained
She further expressed satisfaction with the introduction of Electronic Certificate Origin, saying it will easy their workload and reduce fraudulent practices at the border.
