Mozambique greenlights four one-stop border posts with Malawi

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique greenlights four one-stop border posts with Malawi

3:55 CAT | 06 Jan 2025

Image: Google Maps

Mozambique and Malawi are implementing four “One-Stop Border Posts” (OSBPs) to facilitate bilateral trade, with “efficient movement of goods, people and services”, as provided for in an agreement ratified by the Mozambican government.

According to the document approved by the Council of Ministers at the end of 2024, the governments of the two countries emphasize the need for regional integration throughout the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the “principles of improving trade facilitation” in this region, establishing OPBPs between both states.

The 1,569-kilometre border between Mozambique and Malawi was established in November 1954, by agreement between the respective colonial governments at the time.

The new agreement, signed by the two governments on 23 November 2021 but only ratified by Mozambique more than three years later, provides for OSBPs to replacing the dual controls at Mwanza and Zobué (Tete province), Dedza and Calómuè (Tete), Muloza and Milange (Zambézia), and Chiponde and Mandimba (Niassa).

With this single stop for border controls, the agreement assumes, these processes will be “faster and more effective” and will allow “reducing the number of interruptions in cross-border trade and other transactions, combining the control activities” of each country “in a single place in each direction”.

“To extend the application of each Party’s national laws relating to border control to the other State, thereby enabling border control officers of each Party to perform statutory functions outside their national territory,” the agreement reads.

The agreement allows for “the reception of border control officers in each other’s territory with the authority to perform border control functions using their own national laws.”

The document also provides for the sharing of existing infrastructure and facilities, “thus enabling border control officers of each Party to perform border control functions” outside their territory, as well as “simplifying and harmonizing documents and procedures” in order to allow for “rapid processing”.

Source: Lusa