Maputo — The Mozambican currency, the metical, has not undergone any significant devaluation in recent months, according to the governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Ernesto Gove.

Cited in Monday's issue of the independent newsheet "Mediafax", Gove said that, in reality, there has been a sharp appreciation of the South African rand against all other currencies, and this hits Mozambicans in the pocket since so many consumer goods are imported from South Africa.

In the past nine months, the rand has appreciated by about 30 per cent against the metical, making everything imported from South Africa correspondingly more expensive.

Gove attributed the sharp rise in the value of the rand to the startling rise in the price of gold, which remains one of South Africa's main exports. In January the gold price was 862.2 US dollars an ounce. It soared to 1,212 dollars an ounce in early December, but fell back to 1.096 dollars by the end of the year.

The price quoted at the weekend was 1,066 dollars an ounce, but some analysts predict that gold prices will resume their rise later in the year and may even reach 1,350 dollars an ounce.

"What's happening is not the weakening of the metical, but the appreciation of the rand faced with the high price of gold on the international market", said Gove. "We can see this if we look at the exchange rate of the rand against the US dollar, where the situation is the same".

This is bad news for South African companies exporting anything other than gold. They may struggle to sell their goods abroad - except in captive markets such as Mozambique. Despite the government's call for a "green revolution", the bulk of the foodstuffs on sale in Maputo shops come from South Africa, so that the weaknesses of Mozambican agriculture are now directly affecting consumers' pockets.