Maputo — Tomás Matola, chairperson of Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), the company that operates the Cahora Bassa dam, on the Zambezi River in the central Mozambican province of Tete, has called for the creation of a National Defence Fund (FDN) for better response against various threats, especially islamist terrorism.

According to Matola, who was speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of the Coordinating Council of the Defence Ministry, the new Fund would be responsible for mobilizing, managing, and allocating financial resources to enable operational activities in the defence sector.

"The FDN should promote the mobilization of financial resources from the State Budget, specific contributions, donations, partnerships, and other legally established sources to finance national defence priorities', said Matola.

He explained that the priority areas for FDN should be funding defence strategies and the defence infrastructures. "It will also fund the acquisition of equipment and technology in all aspects, training and specialized training for the Mozambican Armed Forces (FADM), and research and scientific production in military and other areas', he said.

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The FDN, he said, should reduce exclusive dependence on the State Budget, improving the capacity to finance economic and social projects with structural impacts on the economy, improving the medium and long-term planning capacity of the defense sector.

For his part, Ferhat Alkkan, the Ambassador of Turkey to Mozambique, who participated in the meeting, explained that his country resorted to a similar fund to strengthen the defense sector. This Turkish fund in question, invests heavily in the area of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones).

"One of the ways the Defense Industry was financed in Turkey is through the allocation of a percentage of funds from tax collection to the defense sector', he said.

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