Progress in upgrade of port, road and border post THE MAPUTO port upgrade, scheduled to cost R400 million, and the R300 million building of the southern, Mozambican railway system are both in the final bid stages of concessioning, says South Africa's trade and industry minister Alec Erwin.
In addition the design and programming of a new R150 million one-stop border post at Ressano Garcia is nearing completion, all of which is included in the development plan of the Maputo Corridor project now underway.
The Maputo development corridor is moving firmly into an operational mode, says Erwin.
While there are already encouraging results with respect to empowerment, involving toll road projects, agriculture and tourism projects, the full impact of the initiatives and strategies is yet to be felt. The vast trade potential between the two countries is set to take off within four years when the Witbank-Maputo link of the N4 toll road has been completed, says acting chief director of the roads directorate, Chris Smit.
Trans African Concessions (Trac) has been granted the tender for the building of the R2 billion toll road, and Smit says the proximity of Maputo harbour will be of great benefit to both Gauteng and Mpumalanga.
The toll road link, which will form part of the east-west harbour-to-harbour Platinum toll road from Walvis Bay to Maputo, will include five toll plazas, will cut 150km off the trip between Gauteng and Maputo, and shorten travelling time to around four hours.
Work is expected to start on the road in March, he said, with SOS systems and security road patrols to be included. The entire project is expected to be completed by end 2001.
In a recent statement to parliament, Irwin said that a Ônumber of very exciting projects had emerged which were in various stages of completion, implementation or planning'.
These included the Mozal aluminium smelter in Maputo (R6 billion), Foskor's expansion projects (R750 million), an iron reduction-iron slab project (R5 billion), Sasol's expansion projects (R4 billion), the settlement of small farmers (R200 million), three casino projects (R600 million) and six tourism projects (R50 million).
Trac has announced it has raised the capital and loan financing for the toll road project.
HSBC Investment Bank has been appointed by Trac as financial advisers on the project. Investec and Nedcor Investment Bank are lead arrangers and the Development Bank of Southern Africa and FBC Merchant Bank have been appointed co-arrangers of the debt facilities.
