The Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Carlos Zacarias, emphasised the need to take advantage of the country’s geostrategic location to attract more national and foreign investment, arguing that there should be efficient exploitation of the existing diversified natural resources, given that the mining sector is still crucial to boosting national economic development.
‘We need to focus on better exploitation of natural resources, taking advantage of the country’s geostrategic location to continue attracting domestic and foreign investment,’ said the government official, quoted on Monday 29 July by Semanário Económico.
Zacarias guaranteed that the government is working on implementing environmental regulations to make mining and oil activities more flexible, increasing the capacity to prevent and manage natural disasters, making the country resilient and sustainable.
Recently, the Mozambican Chamber of Mines (CMM) argued that the country should collaborate regionally in the mining industry to create a supply chain for the production of electric vehicles.
According to the president of the CMM, Geert Klok, quoted by Lusa news agency, Mozambique has a young mining industry, where the mineral resources are coal, graphite, precious stones and rubies. However, the mines are often in remote areas, leading the country to depend on the markets of other neighbouring countries.
“What we need to do, in my opinion, is co-operate with the region. We have to build a supply chain, not at a national level, but at a regional level, which links up with the automotive industry and the market, rather than each country acting individually,’ he said.
He spoke of the possibility of processing national graphite, one of the components of electric car batteries. “The discussion we’re having in Mozambique is: we have graphite.
Why aren’t we making batteries for electric vehicles? We need to create the environment and the necessary infrastructure for this,’ he said.
Geert Klok added the need to highlight the issue of investment in the process of manufacturing batteries for electric vehicles using graphite, which ‘could cost 12.6 billion meticais (200 million dollars), and will employ around a hundred people, whose labour is qualified. So it’s not an investment that every entrepreneur wants.”
