FORBES BORDER POST — The Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) is stepping up checks on mineral shipments at Forbes Border Post to curb leakages and address discrepancies in declared cargo weights, tightening oversight at a key export route linking Zimbabwe to Mozambique’s port of Beira, Mining Zimbabwe can report.
By Ryan Chigoche
The checks come as mineral exports generate billions of dollars in foreign currency and Zimbabwe prepares to restrict lithium concentrate exports from January 2027, increasing the importance of accurate shipment declarations and effective border controls.
Speaking during the recently concluded MMCZ lithium media tour to the border, Corporate Communications Executive Pretty Musonza said the corporation’s mineral resource accounting team verifies export documents and checks whether the cargo matches what exporters have declared.
“We’ve got our mineral resource accounting team that is here to ensure that the trucks that are carrying minerals have all the requisite paperwork so that we can curb leakages,” she said.
MMCZ has previously reported differences between its invoices, Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) deductions and independently verified cargo weights at Forbes. The discrepancies have raised concerns about possible mineral leakages and lost revenue, although the figures alone do not establish deliberate under-declaration or smuggling.
The corporation has also reported intercepting four trucks carrying lithium concentrates without valid export documents at Beitbridge in late 2025. Two trucks carrying quartz without proper documentation were also intercepted at a Beitbridge truck stop, according to MMCZ disclosures made in February 2026.
At Forbes, officers check whether shipment documents have been authenticated by the relevant authorities and whether the mineral being transported matches the declared product. Musonza said the process could be faster if agencies shared an integrated system that verified paperwork and cargo weights before trucks arrived at the border.
“The ideal situation would be a situation where we’ve got a system that is integrated … so that all the paperwork is verified prior to coming to the border, also the weights are verified prior to coming to the border, so that we avoid the long queues that we’ve seen from town,” she said.
Musonza said the checks were deterring leakages and that MMCZ had prosecuted several cases. She also pointed to an increase in declarations, which she said could indicate that more exporters were using formal channels.
“I think we are deterring; by having these measures in place, we are deterring leakages because we’ve had quite a few of the cases that we’ve prosecuted to date,” she said.
MMCZ did not disclose the value of the weight discrepancies, the number of prosecutions or the increase in declarations, leaving the impact of the checks difficult to measure.
The corporation also lacks its own weighbridges, relying on facilities operated by the Grain Marketing Board and the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development. Musonza said MMCZ was working with the ministry on plans to establish additional weighbridges, preferably automated.
“As MMCZ, we don’t necessarily have weighbridges of our own. It’s something that we would wish that, as a country, we can have more weighbridges,” she said.
The stakes are rising as lithium takes a larger share of mineral exports. MMCZ recorded US$2.159 billion in sales from spodumene, petalite and lithium sulphate in the first nine months of 2026, representing 45.6% of total mineral export sales and surpassing platinum group metals.
Zimbabwe plans to restrict lithium concentrate exports from January 2027 to encourage more local processing. The measure targets concentrates, not all lithium products, leaving more processed products such as lithium sulphate outside the intended restriction.
Forbes is an important route for mineral shipments moving through Mozambique towards international markets. Tighter checks could help close gaps between declared and actual cargo weights, but the scale of any revenue protected will remain unclear without figures on discrepancies detected, cases prosecuted and funds recovered.
