Maputo, 12 May (AIM) – The parties involved in the cotton value chain have reached consensus on the minimum producer price for raw cotton to be practiced in the marketing campaign that will be launched in Mozambique in the next few days.
According to Friday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Notícias”, during negotiations held on Thursday, in Maputo, chaired by Agriculture Minister Celso Correia, cotton producers and the companies that purchase their cotton agreed to maintain the same price as last year.
That price is 33 meticais (about 52 US cents) per kilo. The companies, through the Mozambican Cotton Association (AAM) had wanted to cut the price to 27 meticais a kilo.
But at the end of the negotiations, Correia announced that the minimum price paid to cotton farmers would remain unchanged. “Maintaining the price of raw cotton is the way that the Government found to stimulate national production and safeguard the producers’ income”, the minister said.
For his part, the president of the National Forum of Cotton Producers (FONPA), Benison Simoco, was pleased with the outcome of the negotiations, which he thought would be a mechanism for farmers to increase production levels and create more savings.
FONPA had initially been prepared for a price cut, and was proposing a minimum price of only 30 meticais per kilo. “We, as producers, were happy to hear that the government itself decided to maintain the price above the values we had proposed at the negotiating table”, said Simoco. “This is a motivation for the farmers, and we promise that we will never abandon cotton production”.
(AIM)
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