News

The Coordinating Council of the National Civil Service Authority (ANFP) has established deadlines for regularizing the situation of those employees of the public administration whose terms of employment are "irregular".

Mozambique is still seeking to lay the foundations for a "Green Revolution" that will increase agricultural production and productivity and ensure self-sufficiency in food, declared President Armando Guebuza on Thursday.

The Bank of Mozambique is concerned at how the alleged absence of coins is being used as an excuse for raising prices.

Sweden has pledged 80 million Swedish crowns (about 11.3 million US dollars) to build a new electricity transmission line in Mozambique's northernmost province of Niassa, according to the economic councillor at the Swedish embassy in Maputo, Anton Johnston.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector funding arm of the World Bank, is to provide 360,000 US dollars to support a Mozambican chocolate production company, "Deja Vu Chocolat e Cafes".

The rate of inflation in Mozambique (based on the Maputo Consumer Price Index) was 1.55 per cent in the first quarter of the year, according to the latest set of statistics from the Bank of Mozambique.

For the first time in many months Mozambican President Armando Guebuza and Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the country's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, have spoken - in the clinic where Dhlakama is hospitalised, after suffering injuries in a traffic accident.

The publicly owned Maputo bus company, TPM, on Friday unveiled four new buses that run on natural gas, and are entering service on routes in Maputo and the neighbouring city of Matola.

Over the past fortnight there has been a spate of robberies at Mozambican airports, all aimed at runway lighting systems, according to the state airport company, ADM.

The Mozambican government has approved a 14 per cent wage rise for the lowest paid employees in the public administration, but one of only nine per cent for the highest paid.

The Chinese government is to support Mozambique in the creation of a Centre for Agricultural Research and Transfer of Technologies in the district of Boane, near the Umbeluzi river, in Maputo province.

Representatives of the Swiss-based drug company Novartis are in Mozambique to discuss supplying their anti-malarial drug Coartem to the Mozambican Health Ministry.

Overall production in the southern Mozambican province of Gaza grew by more than 50 per cent in 2006, compared with the previous year, according to the provincial governor, Djalma Lourenco.

Pio Matos, the mayor of Quelimane, capital of the central Mozambican province of Zambezia, says that the money allocated to the municipality to repair the damages caused by severe flooding in February is insufficient.

The Mozambican government and the European Commission signed an agreement on Friday, under which Mozambique will receive a further 50 million euros (about 67 million US dollars) from the European Union's Ninth European Development Fund (EDF).

The chairperson of Mozambique's National Civil Service Authority (ANFP), Victoria Diogo, on Thursday stressed the need to improve the quality of human resource managers in the public administration, so that they can promote efficiency and effectiveness among the staff.

The northern Mozambican port city of Nacala needs about 60 million meticais (about 2.4 million U.S. dollars) a year to fight against erosion, according to the city's mayor, Manuel dos Santos.

The Mozambican government has complained that the South African authorities are not respecting the agreement that allows citizens from one of the two countries to visit the other for up to 30 days without an entry visa, reports Wednesday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".

The Mozambican government on Tuesday decreed a 14 per cent increase in the statutory minimum wage for industry, and services, including for its own employees in the public administration.

The Franco-Portuguese banking consortium that will handle the financial engineering so that Mozambique can acquire a majority stake in the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi river will recover its money through sales of electricity, according to Mozambican Energy Minister Salvador Namburete.