4 December 2007
Maputo — Afonso Dhlakama, leader of Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, has threatened to organise demonstrations against Mozambican membership of the SADC (Southern African Development Community) Free Trade Area that took effect on 1 January.
Interviewed on Thursday by the private television station STV, Dhlakama said he would hold demonstrations across the country "within days". He claimed that Mozambique was not ready for regional integration, which would rob the country of its sovereignty and reduce it to the level of a province of South Africa.
Interviewed in Friday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", Dhlakama described regional integration as "a puppet show", and proposed that Mozambique's membership of the free trade area should be delayed by "10 or 15 years".
Apparently unaware that all the negotiations have already taken place, he suggested that the government approach the other SADC members "and say that the country is not prepared for this combat, because it is a combat in which we will have to impose ourselves on the regional market, and right now we do not have enough strength".
He claimed, without offering any evidence, that most Mozambicans are against regional integration. "If the majority is against membership, then it is better that we stop", he said. "If we stop, the country won't lose".
Mozambique could not compete, "because right now our country is not producing anything", he claimed. (This will come as a surprise, not only to the managers of mega-projects such as the MOZAL aluminium smelter, but also to the country's four operational sugar mills, to the peasants who sell large amounts of maize, potatoes and even wheat to Malawi, and to the companies producing cotton, tobacco, tea or cashew nuts, not to mention the country's mines and fishing industry.)
Dhlakama displayed his ignorance when he claimed that the majority of workers at MOZAL are foreigners, when in fact there are a few dozen foreign staff at the smelter and about 1,000 Mozambican workers.
The government was dragging Mozambique "to the abyss", said Dhlakama. "We have no industries that can compete. All the factories have closed. Nothing is produced, Everything is wrong".
These are truly remarkable complaints, given that Renamo did its best to close down the country's factories, blowing them up during the war of destabilisation. Several of the factories sabotaged by Renamo, such as the Marromeu sugar mill on the south bank of the Zambezi, have reopened after substantial new investment.
With the lifting of customs barriers, said Dhlakama, "the South Africans will come here with everything they want, and will take commercial space away from our fellow countrymen. They'll bring products from the factory gate at prices much lower than those practiced by Mozambican companies".
Dhlakama seemed blissfully unaware that regional integration did not start on 1 January. Mozambique has been reducing its customs duties for several years. The maximum tariff on goods from other SADC members fell to 25 per cent, then 20 per cent, then in December to 10 per cent, and now to zero (except for goods regarded as "sensitive"). At none of the previous stages did Renamo express any objection.
A very different perspective on integration was given by Prime Minister Luisa Diogo, also cited in "Noticias".
"Competition makes us grow", she declared, deploring the timidity displayed by some sectors of the local business community.
Mozambique, she said, was part of a regional process with a political agenda that "continues very firmly and solidly, and in this aspect there have never been any doubts or questioning". Economic integration followed logically from this political agenda.
Diogo said the government was focusing its efforts on ensuring that Mozambique could use its favourable geographical position, and its natural resources, to take advantage of integration, and reap the benefits of duty free access to a market of 230 million consumers.
Diogo pointed out that the abolition of customs tariffs does not mean that imports pay no tax. The general Value Added Tax (VAT) rate of 17 per cent has not been altered, and imports will continue to pay this. Indeed, if the Free Trade Area results in an increase in imports from the SADC region, then tax revenues might rise.
The Prime minister added that nobody could claim that they were taken by surprise. "Mozambican businessmen are in a situation that allowed them to adapt, because we have been reducing the customs tariffs over time", she said.
Diogo argued that the customs tariffs had already fallen so low that removing them altogether would not make a great difference.
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