Guebuza On Results of Local Development Fund
Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, drawing up a balance sheet of his week long visit to the northern province of Cabo Delgado, told reporters that the most visible result of the Local Initiative Development Fund is that flour mills are now appearing throughout the countryside.
Under this fund, annually each district receives at least seven million meticais from the state budget for initiatives intended to increase food production and generate jobs. The money is supposed to be lent to businesses and individuals with viable projects: repayment of these loans will produce a revolving fund that can be continually invested in district development.
The increase in the number of small flour mills, Guebuza said, meant that peasant farmers did not have such long distances to travel to mill their maize, and the time they saved could be used in other activities.
He was also impressed by the increase in the number of small brick factories, producing construction materials that can be used to build better homes that are more resistant to heavy rains and high winds.
Guebuza claimed that the fund had also stimulated the rise in the number of associations of peasants producing rice, vegetables and cotton.
But the President warned against imagining that handing over seven million meticais to each of the 128 districts would solve all problems. It might solve an immediate problem of shortage of funds for development, but other challenges soon arose - such as the need to train those who receive the money in business management.
“We have insisted on the need to train the people who ask for loans”, said Guebuza. “This is our current challenge”. Such training was needed to ensure that the beneficiaries would be able to repay the interest-free loans.
Asked whether the state would recover the old state farms as a way of contributing to a Mozambican green revolution, Guebuza said that running farms was not the state’s job.
Instead the state “takes responsibility for creating a healthy environment so that agricultural production occurs”. It would encourage producers, including the commercial farming sector, and was concerned to train the necessary high level specialists who could play a key role in increasing production.
