Government wants to transform informal sector to boost economy

The intention was expressed by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Jorge Jairoce, during the opening ceremony in Maputo on Thursday of a seminar on the Support Project for the Transition of Informal Enterprises Towards Formalization and Sustainable Development in Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific.

Lasting for four years, the project will be implemented, besides Mozambique, in the Central African Republic, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands and Sudan, and has assistance from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the European Union (EU), and the International Labor Organization (ILO).

About 80 percent of the Mozambican economy is said to be informal (a somewhat misleading figure since it includes all peasant agriculture) with an estimated contribution of 40 percent of the 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 modernizing the competitiveness of employers in agriculture and industry.

“As the Ministry of Industry and Trade, we continue to pursue the mobilization 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 formalized operators with impact on the improvement of the economy”, Jairoce said.

The National Programme to Industrialize 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.”

He 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 formalization and sustainable development”, he explained.

(AIM)