GUEBUZA STRESSES IMPORTANCE OF NACALA CORRIDOR

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza stressed on Sunday the importance of the Nacala Corridor, in the north of the country, not only for the development of Mozambique but for landlocked countries of the SADC (Southern African Development Community) region, such as Malawi and Zambia. Speaking at the opening of a Mozambique-Japan investment seminar, held as part of the visit to Mozambique of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Guebuza praised the intervention of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), in the Nacala Corridor, which runs from the Mozambican port of Nacala, across Nampula and Niassa provinces, to the Malawian border.
JICA’s participation in the Nacala Corridor Economic Development Strategies Project, he said, was aimed at stimulating investment in the Corridor and “maximizing the enormous potential of that region”.With the implementation of the project, Guebuza continued. “the Nacala Corridor region will make viable local poles of economic and social development, making use of the existing synergies”, involving agriculture on a small, medium and large scale, forestry plantations, agro-processing, and the transport corridor itself.He stressed the Japanese introduction of “the innovative concept of trilateral cooperation”, resulting in the Pro-Savana programme between Mozambique, Japan and Brazil. Guebuza described this as “a vast agricultural programme which will transform the Nacala Corridor region into a powerful instrument in the struggle against hunger and poverty, by raising levels of productivity and integrating more of our fellow-countrymen into large scale agricultural production”. 

A separate trilateral programme, involving Vietnam rather than Brazil, has led to a programme for rice production at Nante in the central province of Zambezia.

Guebuza also stressed the Agreement on Liberalisation, Promotion and Reciprocal Protection of Investments between Japan and Mozambique signed in June last year, in the Japanese city of Yokohama during the fifth edition of TICAD (Tokyo International Conference on African Development), This was an instrument “of major importance”, said the President, which will “promote and consolidate economic relations, create stability and ever more favourable conditions for investors, stimulate flows of bilateral trade, capital and private investment, and promote prosperity for our economies and peoples”.This was the first investment protection agreement that Japan had signed with any country in sub-Saharan Africa. Guebuza noted that Japanese companies had been waiting for this agreement “in order to increase the flow of their investments to Mozambique”.   About 50 Japanese businessmen, accompanying Abe on his African visit, attended the seminar. Abe leaves Mozambique on Monday morning for Ethiopia, the third and final stage of his tour. He had earlier visited Ivory Coast.