Bottled mineral water
Maputo, 17 Dec (AIM) – The Mozambican government on Tuesday banned the import of items deemed as non-essential, in order to avoid squandering the country’s foreign exchange reserves.
Speaking to reporters in Maputo, after a meeting of the Council of Ministers (Cabinet), the government spokesperson and Minister of State Administration, Inocencio Impissa, said the items concerned include bottled mineral water, pasta, portland cement, maize flour, salt and tiles.
Most of these goods are easily available from local suppliers, and so do need to be imported. Impissa said that the new restrictions will ensure the priority allocation of foreign exchange to the import of essential goods and services, and will make emerging Mozambican industries more competitive.
The government, said the Minister, is committed to import substitution and stimulating national production.
Impissa also announced that the government is gradually lifting the ban on mining in the central province of Manica, which had been imposed on 30 September – but this measure is only intended to benefit mining companies that have legal status, are not mining for gold, and respect their legal and environmental obligations.
Informal gold mining has seriously polluted rivers in Manica, particularly because these miners used toxic substances such as mercury.
Impissa said that the companies benefitting from the government decree do not use chemicals and are not polluting the rivers. Since they are complying with the norms established by the government they are being allowed to resume their operations. This would also avoid redundancies.
There are about 8,000 informal miners in Manica, many of them mining illegally for gold. There are 36 legal mining companies in the province and about a dozen mining associations.
Impissa said the government is investigating all those who hold mining licences in Manica, to judge to what extent their operations are damaging the environment.
(AIM)
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