Angola wants to cooperate with Mozambique in the area of hydrocarbons

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Angola wants to cooperate with Mozambique in the area of hydrocarbons

5:39 CAT | 10 May 2016

Ministro das Relações Exteriores de Angola, Georges Chicoti após encontro oficial com o Primeiro Ministro Pedro Passos Coelho, no Palácio de São Bento em Lisboa. 2 de setembro de 2013. PEDRO NUNES / LUSA

Lusa (File photo) / Georges Chikoti, Angola's foreign minister

Visiting Angolan foreign minister Georges Chikoti expressed in Maputo yesterday his country’s interest in capitalizing on Angolan experience and cooperating with Mozambique in the area of hydrocarbons.

“There is great potential in areas of oil and gas in Mozambique and those are areas in which Angola has some 40 years or so of experience,” Chikoti said at a press conference after a meeting with his Mozambican counterpart, Oldemiro Baloi.

The two countries should implement concrete actions to facilitate the participation of Angola in hydrocarbon development projects in Mozambique, he said. “There is much that Angola and Mozambique can do in the economic sphere that is in the interests of both states and of businesspeople from both countries.”

Qualifying bilateral relations as excellent, Chikoti said that the two governments would work to convert the remaining US$30 million (EUR 26 million) Mozambique owed Angola into economic assets, Luanda having already cancelled US$30 million of debt last November.

The Angolan Government is also set to implement the visa facilitation agreement signed by the two countries in efforts to expedite the movement of people and goods between them.

“The agreement on visa facilitation signed between the two countries is precisely to meet the needs of the business communities of the two countries. There are Mozambicans who are interested in investing in Angola and there are Angolans who want to invest in Mozambique and we want to facilitate this movement, in the first place,” Chikoti said.

Mozambican minister of foreign affairs and cooperation Oldemiro Baloi agreed that relations with Angola were excellent, and said the finance ministers of the two countries would explore ways to capitalize Mozambique’s residual Angola debt.

“Areas have been identified, but there final work remains to be done by the finance ministries, because this requires careful analysis,” Baloi said.

Pointing out that Mozambique and Angola are facing a shared economic crisis caused by the fall in commodity prices of their leading exports, the Mozambican minister said more creative ways of boosting bilateral economic cooperation must be found.

Source: Lusa