Mozambique: Agricultural growth of 5.2% projected for coming year

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Mozambique: Agricultural growth of 5.2% projected for coming year

7:29 CAT | 06 Nov 2023

Photo: Presidente Filipe Nyusi/ Facebook

The agricultural sector contributed some 388 billion meticais (about six billion US dollars, at the current exchange rate) to the Mozambican economy in the 2022/2023 agricultural year, thanks to a growth in production of key crops, such as grain, pulses, vegetables and root crops.

For the 2023/2024 campaign, a growth of 5.2 per cent in agriculture is projected, compared with 14 per cent achieved in 2022/2023.

Launching the 2023/2024 campaign on Friday in Vilanculo district, in the southern province of Inhambane, President Filipe Nyusi said “in the last campaign we attained an overall volume of production of about 388 billion meticais, which is a growth of 14 per cent compared with the previous campaign.

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Grain production had risen by 17 per cent (3.3 million tonnes, compared with 2.8 million tonnes in the previous year). Maize contributed 2.8 million tonnes, but Mozambican famers only produced 256,000 tonnes of rice.

The production of root crops was up by six per cent, from 6.9 million tonnes in the previous campaign to 7.3 million tonnes in the 2022-2023 year. The main root crop is cassava – up from 6.4 to 6.8 million tonnes.

Growth in agriculture, said Nyusi, is the result of the hard work of peasant farmers, who have capitalised upon the various programmes to integrate household agriculture into productive value chains.

“550,000 households were included in the agricultural promotion programmes”, said Nyusi. Of these, the most important was the government’s flagship agricultural development programme, Sustenta, which covered 316,000 households. A further134,000 households benefitted from the cotton promotion programme.

Agricultural growth, added the President, was also due to the increased use of fertilizer, to subsidized financing and to price stability.

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