Interviewed in Thursday's issue of the Beira daily paper "Diario de Mocambique", dos Santos said the money was needed to pave roads and install gabions that would shore up Nacala's fragile coastline against the encroaching sea.
But currently Nacala only has 12 million meticais a year - 20 per cent of the required sum - to spend on its anti-erosion defences.
Dos Santos said that no foreign partners have come forward to finance projects against erosion, and hence the municipality can only advance with its own meagre funds.
The mayor said that Nacala's total annual revenue is only 40 million meticais (1.6 million dollars), a figure he regarded as "insignificant" in comparison with the city's needs.
Dos Santos claimed, however, that the perennial problem of Nacala's drinking water supply is near solution. A series of small scale water systems were being installed, and the mayor believed that, in the near future, they would cover much of the city.
"Diario de Mocambique" puts the population of Nacala at 250,000. However, the population census of 1997 counted slightly less than 160,000 people in the city, and it cannot have grown by over 50 per cent in just a decade.
SOURCE: AIM
