Regulation to monitor foreign trade underway in Mozambique – Minister Tonela

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Regulation to monitor foreign trade underway in Mozambique – Minister Tonela

12:14 CAT | 20 Nov 2017

File photo / Minister of industry and Trade Max Tonela

The government is developing a regulation to monitor foreign trade and prevent the illicit import and export of goods.

Minister of Industry and Commerce Max Tonela says the regulations will ensure that timely information relevant to quantity, prices, origin and destination of imported and exported goods becomes available.

Speaking on Friday in Maputo during the closing of the XV Coordinating Council of his ministry, Tonela said that the decision to proceed with the preparation of the regulation comes after work in coordination with the Economy and Finance and the Bank of Mozambique highlighted current weaknesses in the monitoring process.

Tonela also said that Mozambique continued to register a deficit in the trade balance.

“Between 2006 and 2016, the cumulative total value of exports was more than US$33 billion, while the value of imports in the same period was about US$57 billion,” he said.

The minister reiterated that the country’s exports continued to be predominantly based on megaproject products such as coal, natural gas from Pande, aluminium from Mozal, electric power and heavy sands, among others.

Meanwhile, he said, the value of traditional export products such as cashew nuts, fish, and cotton had increasingly fallen in international markets.

“Another challenge we are faced with is under and over-invoicing in both exports and imports,” he said.

At the meeting, attended by senior executives from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Tonela also stated that ongoing weaknesses faced by the agricultural sector in relation to the circulation and placement of surpluses, in particular for the supply of domestic industry, was worrisome.

“The Coordinating Council recognised the need for greater discipline in the agricultural marketing process, with the Grain Institute, a stakeholder in the process, focusing its intervention in the fields of stakeholder registration, import and export balance of cereals, interconnection with industries in the process of absorption of surpluses, among others,” he said.

Source: Notícias