29 March 2011
Maputo — The Governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Ernesto Gove, said on Monday in Maputo that Africa, including Mozambique, is not an eternal victim of financial circumstance but has the potential to transform crises into opportunities.
Speaking during a three-day senior policy seminar of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), taking place in Maputo under the theme “Natural Resource Management in sub-Saharan Africa: consequences and political options for Africa”, Gove said that Africa has the resources and a recognised potential to transform crises into opportunities.
Gove stated that “our human and natural resources are the instruments that can catapult forward our march to development, generating financial resources that we need to define, in sovereign fashion, our development priorities”.
“This is the strategic platform of tomorrow that will make us competitive and able to integrate globally, with active participation and not as mere observers or junior partners in the process” he continued.
Gove made these statements in his role as a committee member of the AERC, which is a non-profit institution with its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. The Consortium is dedicated to political research and support for advanced training in economics and social science.
For Gove, it is through the comprehensive and sustainable exploitation of natural resources that Africans can seek the means to reduce external dependence, increase internal production of goods and services, substitute imports and stimulate exports.
The Governor of the Central Bank recognised that the proper exploitation of natural resources requires integrated public policy, and public-private partnerships aimed at increasing income generation and attracting investment.
“The exploitation of natural resources will make the State Budget less dependent and will be the catalyst for a fairer distribution of income. The exploitation of natural resources will create the foundations for our sovereign wealth, establish macroeconomic and market stability and provide for long term investments and inter-generational foreign exchange reserves” he declared.
For Gove, transparency, ethics and justice are essential factors that should be scrupulously respected by the owners of the resources and by the companies involved in their exploitation, because these are fundamental for stability in managing natural resources.
“If this framework of principles is respected, we will truly have genuine and inclusive partnerships. Partnerships that ensure a proper and profitable exploitation of our natural resources and a visible economic empowerment of our countries” he stressed.
The Minister of Planning and Development, Aiuba Cuereneia, speaking on behalf of the Government, said that the exploitation of natural resources of African countries is an important means of speeding up economic growth in the continent, and represents an important source for raising revenues necessary to finance development and promote the wellbeing of the people.
He stressed that the management of natural resources is a complex issue that interacts with all policies and development strategies of countries. It requires governments to search constantly for the best models, founded on greater inclusiveness and sustainability in order to use these financial sources to make development programmes more stable and predictable.
“Currently, the economies of these African countries, although small, tend to be more open with high external dependency. This is a situation aggravated by the fact that our economies produce and export mainly raw materials, with an undiversified structure”, he said.
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Mozambique: Africa Can Transform Crises Into Opportunities