Maputo — A general meeting of the shareholders of Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), held in Maputo on Tuesday, elected a former Mozambican Transport Minister, Paulo Muxanga, chairman of the new board of directors.

His predecessor was the Portuguese appointee Joaquim da Silva Correia.

The new board represents the new shareholding structure of HCB.

As of Tuesday, the Mozambican state holds 85 per cent of the shares, and the Portuguese state 15 per cent. Previously Portugal owned 82 per cent of HCB, and so there was always a Portuguese majority on the board, and a Portuguese chairperson.

Re-elected to the new board were Manuel Tome, who is the head of the parliamentary group of the ruling Frelimo Party, and Gildo Sibumbe, a former director of the Mozambican state electricity company, EDM.

There are four other Mozambican directors (Max Tonela, Isabel Guembe, Domingos Torcida and Rosaque Guale), and two Portuguese directors (Fernando Marques da Costa and Alvaro Pinto Correia).

The supervisory board is now chaired by Mozambican jurist Acucena Duarte, who also heads the Petitions Commission of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, while the new chair of the General Meeting is the Portuguese, Galvao Teles.

If, as seems likely, Portugal sells a further five per cent of its shares in HCB, the number of directors to which it is entitled will fall to one.