GUEBUZA LAUNCHES NATIONAL SAVINGS CAMPAIGN

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Sunday, in the central city of Chimoio, launched a National Campaign to Promote Savings.At the launch ceremony, Guebuza said the government remains committed to improving policies and legal instruments that stimulate individual and family savings, as well as encouraging financial operators to encourage their services.The campaign seeks to step up initiatives that will encourage people to save. It hopes to create innovative mechanisms to mobilise savings, which will make it possible to finance entrepreneurs, and implement the government’s strategy to turn rural districts into poles of development.The formal launch of the national programme, will be replicated at provincial and district level. The government hopes that after five years 80 per cent of the 128 districts will have branches of commercial banks or other financial institutions where citizens can deposit and withdraw their money. Currently only 52 districts have banking services. “The government will continue to induce improvements in socio-economic infrastructures in order to attract banks and other economic operators to set themselves up in more districts, administrative posts and localities as well as in urban neighbourhoods”, said Guebuza.He said that savings are one of the most effective instruments for achieving the desired successes in the fight against poverty.Saving, added Guebuza, means not spending today, not using resources on expenditure that can be avoided or delayed, in order to plan their use tomorrow, thus expanding the basis of future consumption.“We save because we know that life does not end today”, he stressed. “We save because we believe in our dreams of better days to come, days that we build ourselves”.Guebuza said that the current international financial crisis has caused inflationary pressures throughout the world, including Mozambique. But he told his audience “we must accept this crisis as a further opportunity to develop our capacity to seek solutions and to rationalise the few resources we possess. Only in this way will we emerge victorious in the fight against poverty, with savings making a valuable contribution”.