Mozambique's Timber Attracts South Africans
11/14/97
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Headline: Mozambique's Timber Attracts South Africans
Source: PANA
Panafrican News Agency. B.P. 4056, Dakar, Senegal.
Tel: (221) 24-13-95 | Fax: (221) 24-13-90 | E-mail:
quoiset@sonatel.senet.net
Date: 11/14/97
Copyright 1997: Panafrican News Agency
MAPUTO, Mozambique (PANA) - If South African businessmen make good their
investment interest in the Mozambican state-owned timber company, Ifloma,
it could get the firm out of the woods.
Ifloma's director, Mario Dos Santos Armando, proposed a joint-venture with
the South Africans, from the province of Mpumalanga, to relaunch the
company's activities before privatization.
The firm is going through a serious financial crunch, which is blamed on
disastrous mismanagement by the previous general directorate, the Maputo
daily newspaper, Noticias, reported Friday.
Rehabilitation of the company is budgeted at two million U.S. dollars,
mainly for the acquisition of trucks to transport logs from the forest to
the industrial site.
The new management has brought the company back to activity but is
struggling with the shortage of essential items such as glue for the
manufacturing of wood panels. The South African company that normally
supplies this product stopped the sales, allegedly due to difficulties with
Mozambican Customs.
The newspaper said the South African business delegation, led by Mpumalanga
Governor Mathews Phosa, met recently with the Manica provincial government,
in Mozambique, and the Ifloma management in Messica, at the company's
headquarters in central Mozambique.
Responding to Armando's proposal Phosa's special counsellor, Peter Rootman,
said that South African businessmen in the timber industry would soon visit
Ifloma to assess the company's investment potential.
That potential, Armando said, lay in the firms one million cubic metres of
eucalyptus and pine trees, enough for 13 consecutive years of work.
The sawmill has the capacity to produce 26,000 cubic metres of sawn wood,
panels and other products.