Maputo — Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Wednesday opened a two day conference on investment and trade between Mozambique and the United States, intended to explore opportunities for current and potential American investors.

Guebuza said that business people played "a role of great significance in strengthening and diversifying relations between peoples and countries. They establish more intensive contact with our peoples through their workers, and promote the name of their country through their products and services".

Of particular importance, he added, was the role of business in transferring new technologies to Mozambique, and training Mozambicans in how to use them.

Guebuza stressed Mozambique's position as a gateway to the landlocked countries of the southern African interior. Through Mozambique's roads and railways, those countries had easy access to the sea, allowing their goods to reach other destinations across the Indian Ocean.

He pointed to Mozambique's tourist potential, and its vast mineral, agricultural, forestry and energy resources. Investments in these areas, Guebuza said, would not serve not only the Mozambican domestic market, but also that of the other countries of SADC (Southern African Development Community), linked in a free trade area since January 2008.

Guebuza said the government has been "improving the business environment, complying with our role as facilitators of business activities".

Reforms in the public sector, and the government's decentralization strategy, he claimed, "are helping to simplify administrative procedures and make them more predictable".

The public investment in infrastructure such as roads, bridges and electrification was also "a valuable contribution in the continual improvement in the business environment in Mozambique", he said.

About 50 American businesses are attending the meeting, which is organised by the US embassy in Maputo, in collaboration with the Mozambican government's Investment Promotion Centre (CPI), the USA-Mozambique Chamber of Commerce, and the Confederation of Mozambican Business Associations (CTA).