News

The Mozambican Education Ministry is warning that there is likely to be a school enrolment crisis in 2008, with not enough places available to meet the demand for secondary education.

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza said in Dar es Salaam on Thursday that there is huge potential for further investments between Mozambique and Tanzania, which will speed up existing cooperation and strengthen ties of friendship between the two countries.

Civil servants in Mozambique will be able to benefit from university level courses, leading to bachelor's or higher degrees in Public Administration as from 2008.

Funds will be available to implement the Strategic Plan for the development of the western Mozambican province of Tete, said Prime Minister Luisa Diogo on Monday, at the end of a provincial conference to launch the document, that took place in the town of Songo, overlookng Tete's most important economic asset, the Cahora Bassa dam.

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Friday inaugurated a new public university, the University of Lurio (Unilurio), in the northern city of Nampula, the first public institution of higher education in the country to have its headquarters outside of Maputo.

Mozambican private businesses have urged the Mozambican government to scrap, or at least reduce, the fees charged by the company operating a scanner in the port of Maputo.

The theft of cables and other electrical materials has cost Mozambique's publicly-owned electricity company, EDM, over 6.5 million US dollars since 2001, according to the chairperson of the EDM Board of Directors, Manuel Cuambe.

The Deputy Chairperson of the World Bank for Africa, Obiageli Ezekwesili, praised in Maputo on Wednesday the efforts of the Mozambican government in the fight against poverty and the strengthening of the country's economy.

The chairperson of the Mozambican Confederation of Business Associations (CTA), Salimo Abdula, has described as "very positive" the recent decision by the Bank of Mozambique to reduce its key interest rates.

About seven million people are living in cities and towns in Mozambique, most of them without access to basic services.

The First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush, announced in Maputo on Wednesday a grant of 17 million US dollars for the fight against malaria in the central Mozambican province of Zambezia.

Kindlimuka, a Mozambican association of HIV-positive people and their supporters, has launched a project to produce mosquito nets in the southern district of Boane, some 30 kilometres west of Maputo.

The Maputo Provincial Directorate of Agriculture is making good on a longstanding threat to cancel the land tenure rights of investors who fail to use the land allocated to them.

Mozambique's publicly owned electricity company, EDM, has pledged to provide 210,000 new connections in the period between 2007 and 2009.

Just as yesterday Mozambicans were united in the struggle to overthrow colonial rule, so today they are united in the battle to free the country from poverty, declared President Armando Guebuza on Sunday.

Mozambique's publicly owned mobile phone company M-cel has announced that it is slashing the cost of calls from the M-Cel network to fixed phones by 50 per cent, with effect as from this Thursday.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants to see a reduction in company tax exemptions in Mozambique, the IMF resident representative, Felix Fischer, told a Maputo press conference on Thursday.

The first Mozambican national forest inventory in more than a decade has shown that 51 percent of the country's surface is coovered with forest, and a further 19 per cent by other types of woodland.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday completed its final review of Mozambique's economic performance under a loan agreement with the Fund's Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF).

Mozambique's main mobile phone company, M- Cel, has apologosed for defacing the walls of historic monuments on Mozambique Island, off the coast of the northern province of Nampula.