Portugal’s trade balance with Mozambique worsened by 2.4% last year, but remained positive at 448.2 million euros, continuing the favourable balance recorded in recent years.
According to data from the Portuguese Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade (AICEP) based on the Bank of Portugal, sent to Lusa, trade with Mozambique has always had a favourable balance for Portugal over the last five years, with 2022 being the year in which the balance tipped more towards Portugal.
The positive balance that year was 459.4 million euros, increasing from the 356.1 million recorded in 2021.
Mozambique is Portugal’s 33rd export customer, accounting for 0.28% of sales, and its 78th supplier, selling 0.03% of the goods that Portugal buys abroad, which means that its influence on the evolution of Portugal’s trade balance is very insignificant.
Even so, in 2022, there were 1,291 Portuguese companies exporting goods and services to Mozambique, operating in two main areas: machinery and equipment, and chemical products.
Conversely, Portugal imports agricultural products and wood and cork, which together account for more than 70 per cent of Portuguese purchases in this Lusophone African country.
In terms of investment, over the last three years Portugal has invested close to 2 billion euros in Mozambique and last year it invested 1.949 billion euros, which represents an increase of 8.5 per cent compared to the 1.503 billion invested in 2019.
Even so, these figures only represent around 3% of total foreign investment by Portuguese companies.
On the other hand, Mozambican investment in Portugal has always been below 100 million since 2019, peaking in 2022 with 94 million euros invested by Mozambican companies in Portugal, representing around 0.1% of total foreign investment.
More than 80 Mozambican businesspeople are taking part in a business mission to Porto, Sines and Lisbon starting on Monday, in an attempt to reverse the decline in economic relations between the two countries in recent years, and will be attended by Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi .
The mission’s “highlight” will be the Portugal-Mozambican Business Forum, on April 24, under the theme ‘Internationalisation of Portuguese Companies in the PALOP: The case of Mozambican President’, which will be “led by the Mozambican Government, where business cooperation agreements will be signed”, said the vice-president of the Confederation of Mozambican Economic Associations (CTA), Maria Assunção Abdula.
Lusa
