27 September 2008
Sandton — Mozambican President Armando Guebuza has encouraged South African investors to exploit further the business environment that Mozambique offers, thus contributing to making the Mozambican market an attractive destination for foreign investment.
He was speaking in Sandton, South Africa, on Friday night, to an audience of a hundred Mozambican and South African business people at a dinner held to discuss business opportunities in Mozambique.
Guebuza told the guests of the measures taken by his government to facilitate investment and the starting of businesses. "The government has established partnerships with various stakeholders in society, such as the tripartite forum with the employers and the trade unions, and the forum of NGOs - the G-20 - that has supported the government in drawing up development strategies", he said. "It also encourages public-private partnerships".
These initiatives, he said, have contributed to more open dialogue, and to solid decisions on the life of the country.
Guebuza mentioned the macro-economic measures taken to reduce inflation and to maintain the stability of the Mozambican currency, the metical. The attention paid to essential infrastructures such as roads, bridges and electricity supply, he added, had helped give greater confidence to domestic and foreign investors.
Guebuza cited such major investments as the MOZAL aluminum smelter on the outskirts of Maputo, the mining of titanium bearing heavy sands at Moma, in the northern province of Nampula, and the treatment of the natural gas of Pande and Temane in Inhambane province. He argued that these mega-projects also opened opportunities for small and medium businesses who can supply them with goods and services.
"More small and medium companies can establish symbioses with these mega-projects as a way of speeding up the country's economic development", he said.
Guebuza invited the South African businesses to exploit key areas of the Mozambican economy such as electricity, tourism and hotels, and food processing.
He pointed out that the Cahora Bassa dam, now in the hands of the Mozambican state (which owns 85 per cent of the shares) produces over 2,000 megawatts of electricity. This amount will be greatly increased when the Mphanda Nkuwa dam is built, also on the Zambezi, 60 kilometres downstream from Cahora Bassa. The current plan is to generate an additional 1,500 megawatts at Mphanda Nkuwa.
The great challenge, Guebuza said, is to build new transmission lines carrying the electricity generated in the Zambezi valley to other parts of the country. This expansion of the national grid would be a further opportunity for investment.
The tourism industry had been growing in recent years, the President said, thanks to public investment in infrastructure, notably the improvement of roads leading to tourist destinations in the interior. Investment from South Africa and elsewhere is now flowing to the tourism sector.
Guebuza stressed the tourism potential of Mozambique, with its over 2,700 kilometres of coastline, and pristine archipelagos, its parks and nature reserves, and the historic and cultural qualities of the country.
As for mining, many of the country's mineral resources are not yet exploited. Guebuza stressed that huge investment opportunities exist to explore for, extract and process minerals that include natural gas, coal, gold and precious stones.
Further hydrocarbon discoveries are possible. Guebuza said that four foreign companies are currently exploring for oil in the Rovuma Basin in the far north of the country.
The Ministers of Tourism and Mineral Resources, Fernando Sumbana and Esperanca Bias, accompanied Guebuza and were tasked with giving more detailed explanations of their sectors to potential South African investors.
The business dinner was organised by the Mozambique-South Africa Chamber of Commerce and the Mozambican High Commission in Pretoria.
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