GUEBUZA RECEIVES BUSINESSMEN IN LONDON

Several British companies, particularly in the mining industry, have expressed an interest in investing in Mozambique during meetings with President Armando Guebuza now on the second day of an official visit to Britain.Since his arrival on Monday, Guebuza has granted audiences to representatives of several major mining companies, such as Subsea 7, Stanley’s Oil and Gas, and Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC). He also has meetings scheduled with British Petroleum (BP), and with the Italian ENI, which is one of the companies that has made major discoveries of natural gas in the Rovuma Basin in the far north of the country.According to the Minister of Mineral Resources, Esperanca Bias, who is accompanying Guebuza, the companies that have approached the government are financially solid, with every prospect of doing business in Mozambique.“The interaction with British businesses is positive”, she told reporters. “We have been receiving companies with various interests, including companies that want to be part of financing in the country, companies providing services and companies that want to build facilities to produce equipment. One of these companies works in Angola and wants to provide equipment for the petroleum industry in Mozambique”.“The government wants to continue contacts with various British companies to attract them to invest in the country and to support projects in coal, hydrocarbons and heavy mineral sands”, said Bias. “We want to attract business people of this country to support geological and mining activity and add value to the resources that are being exploited in Mozambique”.One of the companies received by Guebuza on Tuesday is ENRC which has 12 coal exploration licences in the western province of Tete. Of these, licence 871 in Chitima, in Cahora Bassa district, in the most advanced .According the ENRC national manager for Mozambique, José Eduardo Dai, the Chitima licence will soon become a mining concession, in order to order to allow the company to extract the coal. Dai expects mining to begin in 2015 – but the logistics are formidable. The export of the coal will require a new railway from the district of Chiuta to the northern port of Nacala.Dai hoped that the railway will be operational by 2015, and said that negotiations with the government on building it are under way. The route for the railway and the viability study have been drawn up. Presumably this line will link up with the railway that the Brazilian company Vale is planning from its concession in Moatize district, across southern Malawi, to Nacala.“In the Chitima area we are making investments of hundreds of millions of dollars”, said Dai. Funding was assured from the company’s own resources and from bank loans.