More on new cotton prices approved in Mozambique – AIM report

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More on new cotton prices approved in Mozambique – AIM report

7:50 CAT | 04 May 2017

TVM (File photo)

The Mozambican government on Tuesday announced new minimum producer prices for cotton, increasing the amount paid to farmers for their cotton by over 58 per cent.

Speaking to reporters after the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers (Cabinet), the government spokesperson, Deputy Health Minister Mouzinho Saide, said that the minimum price for first grade cotton rises from 14.5 meticais (about 22.5 US cents) to 23 meticais per kilo, an increase of 58.6 per cent.

For second grade cotton, the increase is from 10 to 16.5 meticais per kilo, a rise of 65 per cent.

Every year the minimum producer price is discussed between the representatives of the cotton producers and of the concessionary companies that purchase their cotton. “The producers presented this proposal, and the government accepted it”, said Saide.

He also announced that the government has cancelled the land title of a sugar company headed by former Industry Minister Octavio Muthemba after it had failed to produce any sugar.

The company, Sociedade Massingir Agro-Industrial, was granted title to 31,300 hectares of land in Massingir district, in the southern province of Gaza, in 2012. This company is a consortium made up of South African group TSB Sugar, with a 51 percent stake, and Mozambique’s Sociedade de Investimentos Agro-Industriais do Limpopo (SIAL), with the remaining 49 percent.

Muthemba became the company’s Chief Executive Office, and in 2012 he boasted to reporters that by the 2016/2017 agricultural year it would be produced half a million tonnes of sugar and 240,000 tonnes of ethanol a year. He put total investment in the project at 740 million US dollars.

But it is now mid-2017 and there is no sign of any sugar or ethanol production, let alone export, from Massingir.

The provisional land title granted to the company in 2012 has now expired, “and the company has not complied with the operational plan it proposed”, said Saide.

Source: AIM