2 August 2008
Manhica — Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Saturday praised the efforts of the Maputo provincial government in the fight against poverty and to improve living standards.
Speaking in Manhica district, some 80 kilometres north of the capital, at the start of a four day tour of the province, Guebuza said that development is the fruit of hard work, and this had been shown by the provincial authorities.
"Maputo province has stood up firmly and clearly and has participated in building our beautiful Mozambique", declared the President. "You don't build by destroying; you build by working, and by sweating tirelessly. This is what will transform Mozambique into a country where poverty really ceases to exist".
As in his visits to other provinces, Guebuza is concerned to see how the Local Initiatives Investment Fund is being used. This is a fund of seven million meticais (about 290,000 US dollars) from the state budget allocated annually to each of the 128 districts, to projects that will increase food production and generate employment. The beneficiaries of this fund are supposed to repay it, so that more money can be lent.
According to provincial governor Telmina Pereira, despite the droughts that frequently affect the province, agricultural production has been growing steadily. She told Guebuza that the production of food crops rose from 61,800 tonnes in the 2004/05 agricultural year to 263,800 tonnes in 2006/07. She put production this year at 342,000 tonnes (of maize, rice, groundnuts, beans, potato, sweet potato and cassava).
As for cash crops, the rise was from 1.7 million tonnes in 2004/05 to four million tonnes in 2006.07. (The most significant cash crop is sugar cane, at the Maragra and Xinavane plantations).
Pereira said that the immediate results of these increases are the availability of foodstuffs for much of the population, and rising household incomes, particularly from sugar.
"This trend results from the measures that the government takes every year, namely the timely supply of inputs through the holding of agricultural fairs, crop diversification, construction and rehabilitation of irrigation schemes, mobilizing peasant farmers to increase the areas under cultivation, and to increase productivity through the use of animal traction and tractors, and improved seeds", said the governor.
Pereira said there had been a significant expansion in the health services in the province, with the number of health units rising from 60 in 2004 to 77 in the first half of this year.
The number of children in first level primary education (grades one to five) in Maputo province rose from 195,800 in 2004 to 212,000 this year. Over the same period the number of primary school classrooms rose from 530 to 644.
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