According to figures presented at a Maputo press conference on Monday by the Minister of Planning and Development, Aiuba Cuereneia, the overall economic growth rate in the first six months of the year was 8.8 per cent, whereas from January to June 2006 the rate had been 10 per cent.
Growth would have been stronger, Cuereneia said, had it not been for the natural disasters that hit the country at the start of the year - notably the January-February floods in the Zambezi Valley, and cyclone Favio, which cut a path of destruction through key tourist areas in the southern province of Inhambane.
Repairing the damage from these disasters was budgeted at 71 million US dollars.
The areas with the strongest growth rates were electricity and water (24.5 per cent), restaurants and hotels (17.1 per cent), transport and communications (16.1 per cent), trade (14 per cent), government services (11.6 per cent), and the building industry (10.5 per cent).
Agriculture grew at a healthy 8.8 per cent, and livestock production at 7.7 per cent. The growth rate in manufacturing industry was just two per cent, and in mining 6.8 per cent.
Some sectors shrank. Thus fisheries production declined by 8.2 per cent, and forestry by 5.4 per cent.
The decline in the fisheries sector was partly because three companies abandoned their fish farming operations, and partly because 20 per cent of the country's fishing vessels did not put to sea during this period because of the increases in fuel costs.
As for the fall in forestry earnings, Cuereneia said this resulted from a crackdown against illegal exports of unprocessed logs. Logs are no longer being exported to Asia with no questions asked, and so the foreign exchange that they once earned no longer enters the country.
Cuereneia put the rate of inflation in the first six months of this year at 3.7 per cent. The government's target is that January-December inflation should not exceed six per cent.
As for the Mozambican currency, the metical, it registered gains against both the US dollar and the South African rand. From January to June, the metical appreciated by 2.1 per cent against the rand, and by 0.3 per cent against the dollar.
Cuereneia had export figures available only for the first quarter of the year. The January to March exports earned the country 565 million dollars (which compares with 535 million dollars from the exports in the first quarter of 2006). The target for the year is that exports should reach 2.292 billion dollars.
Over the six month period, 85 new investment projects were approved, valued at a total of over 1.83 billion dollars, and which could create 8,000 new jobs. The figure is deceptive: Cuereneia pointed out that the planned investment by the Brazilian mining giant, the Compania Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD), in the coal basin of Moatize, in the western province of Tete, accounts for 83 per cent of this proposed investment.
State revenue in the first half of the year was 15.622 billion meticais (about 610 million dollars). This is 48.1 per cent of the 2007 target for revenue of 32.461 billion meticais, Since tax collection usually picks up in the second half of the year, there is every chance that the target can be exceeded.
For expenditure the story is very different. The state is more or less on target for meeting its running costs. From January to June it spent 15.459 billion meticais on recurrent expenditure, which was 48.8 per cent of the annual target of 31.681 billion.
But only 8.331 billion meticais was spent on capital projects, a mere 24.9 per cent of the capital budget of 33.446 billion meticais.
As for the main social achievements, Cuereneia said that 722 new schools had begun operating - 349 of these are first level primary schools (teaching first to fifth grade), 328 are second level primary schools (sixth and seventh grades), 36 teach the first cycle of secondary education (eigth to tenth grades), while nine are pre-university schools (11th and 12th grades).
In the health service, 19 new heath centres were concluded in the six month period, and in the drive against malaria, 438,950 mosquito nets were distributed throughout the country.
As for water supply, 501 boreholes and 82 wells were built in the first half of 2007, and a further 622 water sources were rehabilitated, bringing clean water to an additional 490,500 people.
Cuereneia admitted the government's concern at the rise in international oil prices. One of the measures to cope with this was to encourage the use of alternative fuels, to ensure that the growth targets for this year would not be compromised.
SOURCE: AIM
