Poor roads cause problems for agricultural marketing – Mozambique

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Poor roads cause problems for agricultural marketing – Mozambique

7:16 CAT | 21 Mar 2017

RM(File photo)

The precarious condition of some access roads in central and northern Mozambique could create difficulties for moving this year’s agricultural surplus, warned the National Director of Domestic Trade, Zulmira Macamo, at a Maputo press conference on Monday.

The current forecast is that this year’s harvest will reach 3.3 million tonnes of grain and over 500,000 tonnes of vegetables.

Moving this amount of produce is a challenge for the government, which needs to have the roads in minimally passable conditions, otherwise the surplus risks rotting in peasant barns. The roads in urgent needs of rehabilitation are mostly in the northern provinces of Niassa, Cabo Delgado and Nampula, and the central provinces of Sofala, Manica, Zambezia and Tete. The largest harvests are also forecast for parts of these provinces.

According to Macamo, the Ministries of Industry and Trade and of Public Works are working together to see what can be done to ensure that the roads are in fit condition to move the surplus crops.

The government also intends to hold a meeting with all stakeholders in agricultural marketing to assess these questions. This will be the First Agricultural Marketing Forum. It will take place alongside the launch of this year’s marketing campaign next Friday in Mocuba district, in Zambezia.

“What we want to do is to verify, together with all the stakeholders, those questions which are bottlenecks, and to assess the possibility of overcoming them, so that we can have a good marketing year”, said Macamo.

About 400 participants are expected, including producers, buyers of surplus crops, institutions involved in the road sector, financial bodies, and marketing institutions such as the Mozambique Grain Institute (ICM), and the Mozambique Commodities Exchange (BMM).

The ICM is intended to intervene as buyer of last resort, in regions, where there are no private buyers to purchase the surplus. The surplus will be stored in BMM silos.

Most of the surplus is in the northern and central provinces, while the south of the country (Maputo, Gaza and Inhambane) runs a food deficit.