The Mozambican authorities have decided that the Mozambique Cereals Institute (ICM) should remain in the hands of the state, despite advice from the World Bank that it should be privatised.
The World Bank, always ideologically hostile to anything that smacks of a state marketing board, claimed that the ICM should be sold off because it was not fulfilling its role as a buyer of last resort.
The Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, Salvador Namburete, told AIM that to deal with the issue of whether or not to privatise the ICM, the government hired a private company to carry out a study. The conclusion of the study was that the ICM should remain in the hands of the state, not only to serve as a buyer of last resort, but also to intervene to ensure food security.
The ICM's task is to act in the marketing of grain in those areas where private traders do not go, because they consider it unprofitable to operate in the more remote parts of the Mozambican countryside. However, the ICM has always been starved of funds, which is why its performance has been poor.
Namburete acknowledged that during its ten years of existence, the ICM has survived by hiring out its assets, including warehouses, offices and equipment to private operators.
"During that period, the ICM never intervened directly", said Namburete.
A recent World Bank study of perspectives for growth of the Mozambican economy concluded that "there is a good argument for selling off the ICM's warehouses and trucks to the private sector".
The Industry and Trade Ministry felt it necessary to review the role of the ICM to decide whether one should "extinguish it once and for all, or reform its guidelines, and we concluded that it should remain in the hands of the state", said Namburete.
The government is currently drafting a new role for the ICM, which means rethinking the use of its assets and workforce, to render it more functional and to ensure that it fulfills its objectives.
"We made the rules very clear in the 2000/2004 marketing strategy, where we indicated that the marketing of agricultural produce is a purely private activity and that operators are free to compete among themselves in buying and selling agricultural surpluses and in finding export markets", said Namburete. "The government will never act as a last minute competitor and prejudice other operators".
The World Bank study recommended that the ICM assets should be sold to different buyers to prevent a situation of monopoly.
It also argues that the existence of a group of independent warehouses and private transporters would help promote competition and provide a variety of services and products.
Fonte: AIM
