Clearance times for mineral trucks moving across the South Africa/Mozambique border at Komatipoort have dropped from an all-time high of over 22 hours in November 2021 to under four hours following intervention by the Maputo Port Development Company (MPDC), Ministry of Transport, customs, single window and GTSA, the KM4 terminal managing entity.“If the trucks aren’t moving, we as a port cannot make money,” Ana Santiago, MPDC chief financial officer, told Freight News.According to a transporter, trucks started backing up when Mozambican customs cancelled its multiple entry permit for trucks and started charging 750 Mozambican meticais (R180 rand) per trip, without putting the necessary structures in place to handle the additional volume of paperwork and payments.Thousands of trucks pass through the border every day, with drivers having to fill in forms and make cash payments.The TIP (temporary import permit) payment solution, developed in-house by the MPDC, integrates data from the MPDC TAN (Truck Arrival Notification) system and SEW (single electronic window).An interface between the MPDC TAN system and a commercial bank automates the payment of the TIP permit fees and confirms payment to customs.Transit through the KM4 border post on the Mozambican side can now take 30 minutes or less thanks to the automation and payment system and paperwork, according to a haulier interviewed by Freight News.He also confirmed MPDC statistics that it took less than 90 minutes for a truck to off load and be back on the road from the time it arrived at the port. Time spent inside the port is around 30 minutes. “MPDC is pretty damn good,” he said.Santiago says the decision to get involved with reducing the bottleneck at the border post is supported by the MPDC Masterplan, which is geared to improved efficiencies in the port in order to maximise throughput.“Our volumes were decreasing, and big vessels were having to wait for the cargo, which in turn costs the cargo owner money.”All the stakeholders in the logistics value chain were losing money and the corridor was becoming less competitive.An MPDC team was sent to the border to understand the problem and provide possible solutions.“What we found is that it took the drivers a long time to fill in manual forms, which then had to be processed by hand at customs.“We came up with a simple solution which would improve efficiencies by reducing the errors introduced by the human factor,” she says.It was determined that MPDC already had all the necessary data on its own TAN system, which is connected directly to the mines.What was required was for customs to agree to go paperless and for a bank to partner for electronic transfers rather than cash payments at the border.It took the two-person MPDC programming team two weeks to develop the solution after customs gave the go-ahead, and another two weeks for the bank and SEW to integrate their systems, according to Santiago.Now, instead of spending hours filling in forms at KM4, all the driver has to do is to pick up the TIP permit.The system went live on December 15, with a selected group of five hauliers being brought online sequent ia lly.Others are already queuing to be included in the automated payment system, according to Santiago.“It is not possible to open it up to all users in one go because of the human factor. Our system can handle it, but people have to be trained and change the way they have been working.”The success of the implementation lays the foundation for the introduction of a one-stop border post operating 24 hours a day.
