Mozambique minister in Macau ‘seeking investors for gas projects’ from 2022

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Mozambique minister in Macau ‘seeking investors for gas projects’ from 2022

7:49 CAT | 19 Oct 2018

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Mozambique’s minister of industry and commerce told Lusa that he is in Macau looking for Portuguese-speaking and Chinese investors for natural gas projects, with production expected to start by 2022.

“We intend to priorities local business, but never jeopardising the progress of the project,” stressed the minister, Ragendra de Sousa. “Since it has no domestic capacity, the country is open to inviting entrepreneurs and this is the ideal platform.

“Here we speak to Portugal, Angola, Cape Verde, and also Macau and China,” de Sousa said. “All are invited to participate in the gas projects” in northern Mozambique.

These comments were made on the sidelines of the Macau International Fair (MIF), the territory’s largest event for the promotion of trade and investment, and for which Mozambique and the Chinese province of Fujian are partners at this, the 23rd fair. Several hundred institutions are taking part in the event, from some 50 countries and regions.

“We are using all available platforms” to seek investment, explained de Sousa, who stressed that the country aims to priorities BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) investments at a time when the country is preparing to “initiate big projects in gas [that are] capital intensive, but which need many associated services.”

BOT is a way of financing projects in which the public sector grants licence to private entities to finance, design, build and operate a project for a time, after which the control returns to the state.

“The investor is responsible for investing, operating, making money and, after it is paid, either continuing or transferring [it] to the state,” de Sousa explained. “In that way we are sure that any investor concerns itself with revenue” – so avoiding the “inefficiency” of projects that are completely state financed.

Tourism, agriculture, transport links and energy sector are the four areas that Mozambique’s government has designated as priorities, the minister said.

The fair was inaugurated on Thursday and runs until Saturday. At the opening ceremony, Macau’s secretary for economy and finance stressed the former Portuguese colony’s role in responding to Chinese interests and those of Portuguese-language countries.

At the same time as the MIF, the PLPEX exhibition of products and services from Portuguese-language countries is taking place alongside.

Source: Lusa