The Government has expressed, through the Ministry of Transport and Communications, its openness in entering into more partnerships with the private sector to develop rail-port infrastructure to ensure a rapid and comprehensive response to national demand.
“We continue to develop these infrastructures and we are open to partnerships with the private sector to ensure an increasingly comprehensive response to national demand for these services,” said Ambrósio Sitoe, national director of Logistics and Private Transport Sector Development at the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC). He added: “we have been working on the creation of what are the regulatory authorities for this sector, such as the Institute for the Rail and Port Area, to allow for competitiveness and efficiency.
Ambrósio Sitoe was speaking this Thursday, April 27, during the 9th Minerals and Energy Exhibition Conference of Mozambique on the panel entitled “Transport, Infrastructure and Technology to Support the Development of Mining and Energy”.
During his speech, Ambrósio Sitoe explained that “the communications sector outlined a strategy in 2009, which we called the Integrated Strategy of the Transport and Communications Sector in Mozambique. It is based on two pillars, the first being to guarantee the construction of infrastructures in the country to respond to national demand and regional demand. The second pillar states that the infrastructures should be competitive and efficient.
“In light of this strategy, we must give priority to maritime cabotage. There is a need to develop port systems so that berthing of cabotage ships can be guaranteed, but more than that, we have to ensure the construction of rail infrastructures that will link the north to the south, bearing in mind that our rail infrastructures run from east to west,” he explained.
Given the existing projects in this sector, the leader made it clear that “to build this type of infrastructure, which requires major investment from the outset, the State would not be able to do it alone. Hence the reason for the creation of the National Directorate for Logistics and Development of the Transport Sector to attract the private sector to engage in this process of developing infrastructures – which are the responsibility of the State -, but which can also be developed by that sector to meet demand for these services.
Ambrósio Sitoe also explained that one of the other initiatives to attract the private sector to join rail and port projects consists of the Government using what is called ‘Spatial Planning Methodologies’, where the potential that exists in the country is planned in order to verify “the anchor partner that can make infrastructure construction feasible taking into account the project finance model.
