Zim’s railway collapse chokes economy: Cross

ROBIN PHIRI

Zimbabwe’s crippled railway system, once the lifeline of the economy, has become one of the country’s most formidable economic impediments, strangling export competitiveness, inflating transport costs, and threatening the nation’s prospects in lucrative global markets such as lithium and tobacco, economist and former Monetary Policy Committee member, Eddie Cross has said.

The network, largely built during the colonial era, is now a shadow of its former self after decades of neglect, chronic underinvestment, and internal mismanagement. Cross did not mince words, warning that the sector is in a state of collapse that is directly undermining Zimbabwe’s economic potential.

“The entire network is broken,” Cross said.

“…we are running eight trains a day on the entire network.”

Once a bustling artery for freight and passengers, the system now limps along at a fraction of its former capacity, forcing companies to rely almost entirely on road haulage, a slower, costlier, and less efficient alternative that is eating into profit margins and pushing up consumer prices.

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.

Contacted for a comment, the National Railways of Zimbabwe spokesperson, Andrew Kunambura said: “It is wrong to say we run eight trains a day, it is eight trains in either direction for every route and we have many such routes. For instance, Bulawayo –Chicualacuala, it is eight trains to and eight trains from. Same with Harare–Beira, Harare–Plumtree. So fundamentally, there are much more trains running in our system on a daily basis.”