Mozambique And Portugal: An Indivisible Partners -By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh

Portuguese businesses are prioritizing various economic sectors to invest in Mozambique, according to reports carefully monitored from the Government of Mozambique and Portugal, as well as Mozambique’s Confederation of Business Associations (CTA).

Portuguese businesses are eyeing economic sectors including industry, energy, agriculture, infrastructure and logistics. They are also prioritizing education and training, hospitality and tourism.
Mozambique and Portugal have developed excellent bilateral relations. A third of everything that Mozambique buys from the European Union comes from Portugal, according to 2020 data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), the most recent made available for public.

Medicines, diagnostic and laboratory reagents, wheat, rye and construction materials are the main Portuguese products arriving on the Indian Ocean coast, worth around €230 million in 2020.

In the opposite direction, over half of what Portugal buys from Mozambique is seafood, worth a total of €22 million in 2020. Portugal is sixth among European Union destinations for Mozambique’s exports.

Currently, 1,450 Portuguese companies export their products to Mozambique, and more than 500 are operating in different areas in the country. Mozambique’s two main banks, Millennium and BCI, are owned by banks based in Portugal, and there are a number of other major Portuguese brands in the fuel, hotel and construction sectors, among others.

António Carlos Silva, the Director of the Portuguese Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade (AICEP), said that economic relations between Portugal and Mozambique were still below the potential. This was, he said, a challenge that had yet to be addressed with time.

During his official working visit to Portugal in mid-November, President Filipe Nyusi invited more Portuguese businesses to invest in Mozambique. Speaking at the opening of the Montebelo Mosteiro de Alcobaça Hotel, in Portugal, President Nyusi reiterated his invitation to Portuguese businesspeople to invest in Mozambique.

In the presence of Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, President Nyusi reaffirmed that his government sees tourism as one of its priorities for the diversification of the national economy. Statistics show the tourism sector contributing more than 9% to Mozambique’s gross domestic product in the first half of 2022.

For Filipe Nyusi, the presence of the government at the inauguration of the hotel symbolizes the good relations that exist between the two countries in various areas of bilateral cooperation. Besides tourism, Nyusi further called for a strengthening economic relations with Portugal, and training and investment in the transformation of his country’s raw materials, to enhance their value.

In addition to speeches by the heads of state of Mozambique and Portugal, the inauguration of the €24.5 million Montebelo Mosteiro de Alcobaça Hotel was preceded by a blessing by the Auxiliary Bishop of Lisbon, D. Américo Aguiar, and a tour to the five-star hotel, designed by Pritzker Prize winner Eduardo Souto de Moura and built around the 12th century Alcobaça Monastery, a Unesco World Heritage List since December, 1989.

The hotel’s operators, the Visabeira group, has a partnership in Mozambique dating back more than 20 years. The Montebelo Hotels & Resorts chain owns six hotels and resorts in Mozambique.

With an approximate population of 30 million, Mozambique is endowed with rich natural resources. It is one of the 16 countries with a collective responsibility to promote socio-economic, political and security cooperation within the Southern African Development Community.