Maputo — Commercial agriculture in Mozambique is still far from attaining the average standards of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region because of its limited capacity of production and productivity, worsened by difficulties of exploiting the national and regional markets.

Some other factors for the poor competitivity of the Mozambican agriculture in Southern Africa is the high price and poor quality of the country's products, determined by high cost of production factors.

The majority of the Mozambican population are working in agriculture, but still using mechanisms of subsistence, with poor innovation in production means and a poor response to the demands of the transformation industry and to the need of exports.

Only about five per cent of Mozambican farmers are using fertilizers, and only about six per cent are using efficient irrigation techniques.

The seven per cent economic growth recorded in the last few years was more the result of the contribution of the industrial sector and services, rather than the work of the about two thirds of the Mozambican population living in the rural areas. A recent study published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) criticised the development strategies adopted in mid-1980s and the liberal market reforms as prejudicial to the poor.

The same study says that 'since the end of the war of destabilization, in 1992, the agricultural sector grew only to the level they had attained during the colonial rule, but there were no significant improvements in terms of productivity'.

To improve rural agriculture and integrate the small farmers in the formal economy, the government established, seven years ago, the Agricultural Markets Support Programme (PAMA), with a budget of 27.4 million US dollars, disbursed by the government and the United Nations Agriculture Development Fund. Of that amount, the latter contributed 23 million US dollars.

As a pilot programme, PAMA was to be implemented in a three-year period, and the idea was to create a sustainable network of commercial farmers and traders. About 23,000 families joined this project organized in 204 associations in the northern Cabo Delgado and Niassa, and the southern Maputo provinces, said in Maputo PAMA coordinator Rui Ribeiro.

The government is set to remove its 3.8 million US dollars contribution to the project, which will put to test the sustainability of the project.

It is believed that the money available for the farmers is enough, but there is the problem of lack of training in matters as the behaviour of the market, road access, poor supply of water for irrigation, among others.