10 October 2008
Maputo — What happens in one company is of interest to other companies, and what happens in the business sector as a whole is of interest to the state and to all of society, declared Mozambican President Armando Guebuza in Maputo on Friday.
He was speaking at the opening of a two day conference on corporate governance, a theme given added urgency by the recent displays of corporate greed and misgovernance which have brought the world's financial system to its knees.
The conference has been organised by the Joaquim Chissano Foundation, set up by Guebuza's predecessor, and takes as its theme "Probity and Integrity at the Birth of the Millennium".
The conference has brought together over a hundred participants from all over Africa and beyond to debate how corporate governance can be used to promote sustainable development and poverty eradication.
Business integrity was of vital importance, Guebuza argued, doubtless with current events in mind. "It is enough to remind ourselves how the shock waves caused by the collapse of a company impact upon other companies and other sectors of human activity in a particular society, and even on a planetary scale", he said.
He praised the participants in the conference "for accepting the challenges inherent in corporate governance". They could set examples "which the business community in our countries can follow, emulate and replicate".
"Other business people and shareholders will look to you for leadership and inspiration, so that they may also govern their companies well and establish good relations with other companies, the state, and society in general", Guebuza said.
Codes of ethics might vary from company to company, he added, but they all hinged on the concepts of probity, transparency, accountability and social responsibility.
He praised "the increasing number of Mozambican civil society organisations who, in partnership with the government, are promoting good governance and corporate governance".
For its part, the government remained committed "to deepening the structural reforms we have been implementing in the public sector, which are intended to decentralize powers down to local level, to simplify bureaucratic procedures, and make the sequence of administrative acts more predictable".
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