28 December 2008
Maputo — Mozambique's publicly owned ports and rail company, CFM, made a profit of slightly more than 293 million meticais (about 11.7 million US dollars) between January and November, according to CFM chairperson Rui Fonseca, in his end of year message.
According to the provisional data for this 11 month period, CFM's operational costs were 1.9 billion meticais, and its income was 2.2 billion meticais.
From January to October, Fonseca said, the pots handled 9.7 million tones of cargo, a 4.9 per cent increase on the 9.2 million tones handled over the same period in 2007.
The increase in goods moved by rail was considerably larger - an increase of 13.8 per cent, rising from 3.3 million tones to 3.7 million. Most of this was along the southern lines, running from Maputo to South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, which are still directly operated by CFM. These lines handled 3.3 million tones of freight.
The two lines leased out to private management (Beira-Zimbabwe and Nacala-Malawi) only handled 470,000 tonnes between them.
To consolidate these results, Fonseca called for a strategy "to improve our conditions so that we are more competitive on the market, and adopt aggressive policies that bring us closer to our clients".
He recognized that 2008 had been a difficult year, particularly because of the huge oscillations in fuel prices, and the international financial crisis. Such factors had "negative impacts" on CFM, "given how fragile our economy still is".
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
