Consumer goods for festive season guaranteed, says minister

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Consumer goods for festive season guaranteed, says minister

7:14 CAT | 12 Sep 2016

Mozambique’s Minister of Industry and Trade, Max Tonela, said on Saturday that the government is planning to take measures to control the cost of living as the 2016/17 festive season approaches.

Speaking to reporters in Maputo at the end of a meeting of his Ministry’s Coordinating Council, Tonela said the availability of basic consumer goods for the festive season is guaranteed, and the government intends to set reference prices.

Priority will be given to local produce – for example, Mozambican chickens rather than imported poultry “and we are talking with the national producers about this”.

Tonela said Mozambique was suffering from sharp practice in foreign trade, with under-invoicing of the country’s exports, and over-invoicing of goods it imports. To tackle this problem, a department in the foreign trade directorate of his ministry is drawing up a data base, with information supplied by the customs service making it possible to compare the prices of Mozambican imports and exports with international prices.

To deal with such dishonest tactics by traders, “the legislation will be revised so that we have the power to act”, added Tonela.

He said that the Mozambique Grain Institute (ICM) is being restructured so that it will be more active in the most fertile parts of the country. The ICM is the successor body to the defunct agricultural marketing board, Agricom, and it is supposed to operate as buyer of last resort. Tonela acknowledged that in fact the ICM purchases very little grain nowadays.

He wanted this to change. Tonela thought it absurd that food processing industries in Maputo have to import maize to produce flour, while farmers in the northern and central provinces are exporting maize to neighbouring countries.

Tonela hoped that the ICM would become a “more dynamic” body, buying up surplus in the areas of greatest production, even if this meant closing down ICM delegations in less productive areas.

He was also concerned that the silos built in recent years with public funds are grossly underused. In some cases the silos are used to less than 50 per cent of their capacity. Tonela said his Ministry will talk to private bodies to ensure greater use of the silos in order to build up a food reserve.

Source: AIM