INVESTING IN MOZAMBIQUE NO LONGER A RISK

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Sunday assured Chinese business people that investing in Mozambique nowadays is no longer a risk.Speaking at the Mozambique-China Business Forum in Beijing, Nyusi said that today Mozambique imports from China grain, automobiles, petroleum, cement, machinery – and in some cases Chinese companies opt to assemble their goods in Mozambique.China, he stressed, has become one of the major investors in Mozambique. From 2013 to the first half of this year 149 Chinese investment projects were approved for a total of 751 million US dollars of foreign direct investment, and capable of creating about 20,000 jobs.
Cooperation between the two countries is now a reality, declared Nyusi. “Nobody can knock down a tree that has been planted with love”, he said. “It sets down roots. The tree planted with love is the true friendship between Mozambique and China”.
About 350 business people attended the event, of whom only 39 were Mozambicans, part of the delegation Nyusi has brought to the Third Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which begins on Monday.  Mozambique, Nyusi said, has not come to Beijing “as just another country participating in FOCAC. We came to offer and to prove opportunities so that, together with Chinese and African brothers, we can speed up the development of Mozambique”.
In Mozambican tourism, agriculture, agro-industry, mining, energy and infrastructures, China is always present. “China is the largest investor in the hotel industry and is also in aquaculture and fisheries where the volumes of production have been growing every year”.

He declared that Mozambique is known internationally for producing the best prawns in the world. In 2017, it exported 5,800 tonnes of prawns and 4,900 tonnes of assorted fish, including tuna. “We have Japanese, South Korean, Greek, French, Spanish and South African companies operating in fishing or aquaculture, in partnership with Mozambican companies”, the President said. Before the opening of the Forum, Nyusi received representatives of 11 Chinese companies, including some who are already working in Mozambique and others who want to begin operations in the country. They included the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), which is building the suspension bridge over the Bay of Maputo. Mozambican public companies and institutions on Sunday signed six memorandums of understanding with Chinese partners.Thus the country’s largest commercial bank, the Millennium-BIM, reached an understanding with Fosun International, a Chinese investment and asset management company, and the publicly owned mobile phone company M-Cel signed a memorandum with one of the leading Chinese telecommunications companies, Huawei.The Mozambican government’s Investment and Export Promotion Agency (APIEX) signed an understanding to promote industrial parks in Mozambique, and the National Roads Administration (ANE) signed three memorandums. Lourenco Sambo, the general manager of APIEX, said that 20 proposals for memorandums of understanding had been presented, but for “technical reasons” only six were signed.He added that participation at the Forum exceeded expectations. The Mozambican organisers initially believed that only 90 Chinese companies would accept the invitation, but on the day over 300 showed up.
 

ATTACKING MAPUTO-JOHANNESBURG

The General Commander of the Mozambican police, Bernadino Rafael, announced on Friday that the police have detained, inside South Africa, some members of the criminal gangs who have been attacking buses and other vehicles on the road from Maputo to Johannesburg. Speaking at a meeting in Maputo with the Mozambican Federation of Road Transporters (FEMATRO) to discuss means of strengthening security for travellers, Rafael, cited in the Maputo daily “Noticias”, said the detentions occurred as part of a joint operation between the Mozambican and South African police forces. Those arrested had taken part in at least two recent attacks on buses travelling from Maputo to Johannesburg.
“The criminals were arrested with some of the documents and cell phones they had stolen from the passengers”, he said. “Based on these clues, our colleagues in the South African police are expanding their lines of investigation in order to neutralise other members of the crime syndicate which has recently caused problems for travellers. Investigative work is continuing to clear up all the events registered to date”.Rafael said the police have established that some of the gangs attacking vehicles contain both South African and Mozambican criminals, while others consist exclusively of South Africans.Some of the criminals pretend to passengers, and board the buses in Maputo. Once the bus has crossed the border and is in South African territory, they pull put weapons and start to rob the other passengers.

“So one of the measures we have taken to tighten security for people travelling on the buses, is that passengers must be registered, with a photocopy of their ticket and their passport”, Rafael announced. “This measure is to identify all those passengers who, in the middle of the journey, commit crimes”.
FEMATRO chairperson Castigo Nhamane, said he was pleased with the Federation’s interaction with the Mozambican police. He called for greater coordination with the South African police to ensure an effective fight against the gangs of highwaymen. The most recent assaults have been against buses of the Mozambican company Majugar and the South African company Intercape, both operating the Maputo-Johannesburg route.The travellers, mostly Mozambican, were stripped of their valuables, and of the money they were carrying for purchases in South Africa or for medical expenses.Several bus companies ply the Maputo-Johannesburg route, some offering two trips a day. Although the journey takes a long time (about ten and a half hours), it is much cheaper than flying.

ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES TO OPERATE FROM NACALA

Ethiopian Airlines will begin operating domestic flights in Mozambique as from 1 October, according to Emmanuel Chaves, chairperson of the Mozambican airports company AdM.

Speaking at an event during the Maputo International Trade Fair (FACIM), held in Marracene district, 30 kilometres north of the capital, Chaves said Ethiopian Airlines would exploit both domestic and international routes based on the northern airport of Nacala.

Nacala airport, despite the high standard of its facilities, is usually written off as an expensive folly, since so far no international companies have expressed any interest in flying there. Currently the only scheduled flights are by Mozambique Airlines (LAM), which flies between Maputo and Nacala twice a week.

The airport, inaugurated by former President Armando Guebuza in 2014, was not preceded by any serious viability study to establish whether there was a demand for flights to Nacala. It was built by the Brazilian company Odebrecht, and Brazilian prosecutors have established that Odebrecht paid a bribe of 900,000 dollars, presumably in connection with the airport. The Mozambican recipients of this bribe have not yet been named.

But the decision by Ethiopian Airlines could change the picture. Chaves, cited in Friday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Noticias”, said that, with this development, Nacala Airport “will no longer be a white elephant”.He explained that the company has set up a subsidiary “Ethiopian Mozambique Airlines”, which is registered in Mozambique. Based on its Mozambican certification, it will be able to fly to destinations inside and outside Mozambique.

He added that a team of senior managers from Ethiopian Airlines is currently in Mozambique, dealing with the final details to ensure that the flights will indeed begin in October.Chaves believed that the Ethiopian Airlines operations in Nacala will make it viable to embark on a major real estate development on an area of 300 hectares alongside the airport. He added that the Bank of Mozambique has already agreed to build its northern regional offices in this “airport city”.Chaves said that ADM is in negotiations with LAM so that the LAM subsidiary MEX (Mozambique Express) will base its operations in Nacala.