Maputo, Mozambique — The Mozambican government intends to sell off the state's minority shareholdings in privatised companies, Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi told reporters this week.

Mocumbi said that the privatisation programme that began in the later 1980s was now "practically concluded."

There remained the question of the percentage of shares in privatised companies (usually 20 per cent) that the state has been holding on behalf of workers and managers of these companies.

"We urge that [workers] set up groups that will acquire the shares, influence decisions to be taken by boards of directors, and even appoint board members," Mocumbi said.

The government, he said, had set up a new institution that would handle the state's shareholdings, including those that should go to workers and managers of formerly state-owned companies.

The state's minority shareholdings include some in highly profitable companies, such as the main brewing concern CDM (Beers of Mozambique).

"The state doesn't privatise companies only when they are in crisis," Mocumbi explained, saying the objective was to "turn more Mozambicans into entrepreneurs."

He added, though, that the state's shares in successful companies such as CDM would not all be sold off immediately.

"The state could take a small percentage of shares in CDM and offer them for sale on the stock exchange," Mocumbi said.

He insisted that it was not the state's job to run productive enterprises, conceding that "our past experience was that the state was not a good manager."

He said that the state would maintain in public ownership those companies that provide "services of public utility" and those that lease out state property to private management.

An example of the latter category is the ports and railway company, whose port terminals and rail lines are to be privately managed while the basic infrastructure remains state property.