The consequences are especially dire for Zimbabwe’s emerging lithium industry.
With production forecast to reach 10 million tons in the next three years, the absence of a reliable rail network threatens to price the country out of the global market. “When you’re going to look at getting the railways back into operation you’re not just looking at buying a few locomotives.
There’s no point in buying locomotives if you put them on the track and they fall off the rail — which is what they’re doing,” Cross said, dismissing the recent $7 million allocation to the sector as “pocket money. ” He said transporting lithium from mine to port can cost as much as US$1,500 per ton, costs that are directly deducted from the export price. “What you’ve got to understand is this — when a guy producing a million tons of lithium 30 kilometers from a railroad ships his lithium today to the coast, he moves it by road to the port.
Sometimes it’s road to Johannesburg and then rail to Durban, sometimes it’s road to Beira or road to Maputo through Mpumalanga.
It costs a fortune,” Cross explained. “ If we could put that entire traffic on rail, we could save hundreds of millions of dollars. ” The inefficiency is not limited to lithium.
The tobacco industry, a key foreign currency earner, is also haemorrhaging profits due to excessive transport costs.
Zimbabwe’s 300,000 tons of tobacco incur shipping costs that are shockingly uncompetitive. “It costs US$6,000 to move a container from Harare to Durban, while the Chinese pay US$2,000 to move a container from China to Chicago,” Cross said.
This cost disadvantage is not merely a logistical issue, it is a structural drag on the economy, deterring investment, reducing export revenues, and worsening the country’s trade balance.
Cross argued that the inefficiencies in the transport sector are bleeding both business and government of desperately needed revenue. “There is enormous money being made in this economy and it’s not coming to us either as business or as government because the inefficiencies in our system are so enormous. ” Cross warned that without a decisive, large-scale rehabilitation of the railway system — including track renewal, modern rolling stock, and a transparent, professionally managed operating structure — Zimbabwe will continue to lose billions in potential revenue and remain dependent on expensive, high-maintenance road transport.
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