The Ministry of Industry and Trade is attempting to formalize informal firms in order to strengthen the Mozambican economy and make it more sustainable for development.
This intention was expressed by the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Jorge Jairoce, at the opening ceremony of a seminar on the “Support Project for the Transition of Informal Enterprises Towards Formalisation and Sustainable Development in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific” in Maputo on August 25.
Lasting for four years, the project will alongside Mozambique be implemented in the Central African Republic, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, and Sudan and will receive assistance from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the European Union (EU), and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
About 80 per cent of the Mozambican economy is estimated to be informal (a somewhat misleading figure since it includes all peasant agriculture) with an estimated contribution of 40 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Jairoce believes that the government’s actions, associated with the project, will contribute to the provision of baseline information that will be fundamental to the transformation from the informal to the formal sector, in addition to leveraging and modernising the competitiveness of employers in agriculture and industry.
“As the Ministry of Industry and Trade, we continue to pursue the mobilisation of support from cooperation and development partners for the various actions to promote and encourage small operators in the transformation of the informal sector, thus catapulting the increase of formalised operators with impact on the improvement of the economy”, Jairoce said.
The National Programme to Industrialise Mozambique (PRONAI) constitutes the government’s strategy for the five-year period 2020-2024 which “intends to replace imports, increase the consumption of national products, boost employment and income generation for youth and women, as well as consolidating the industrial sector, through the structural transformation of the economy”.
Jairoce also said that the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone (ZEPA), located in the Pemba – Lichinga corridor in the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa, is designed for the reduction of dependence on food imports.
“We stress that the government, together with its development and cooperation partners, will remain committed to finding better strategies to support the competitive development of production chains in the transition of informal enterprises towards formalisation and sustainable development”, he explained.
