Parliamentarians Assured of Solution to Poultry Crisis
MOZAMBIQUE - Government officials have assured Mozambican parliamentary deputies that measures are in hand to solve the crisis in the country's poultry industry caused by the dumping of cheap Brazilian frozen chickens on the Mozambican market.At a Maputo press conference on Friday, the chairperson of the Economic Activities and Services Commission of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Lutero Simango, told reporters that the Commission had discussed the problems of Mozambican poultry producers with officials from the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
"From the information we received, it seems a possible solution has been found", Simango said, "but we must wait until the end of the year to see if this brings results".
Simango declined to go into details, on the grounds that parliamentary commissions should not be spokesmen for the government. "As a commission, we don't bring solutions - we are just the eyes and ears of the people", he said.
But he stressed that the poultry trade was the livelihood for a large number of Mozambicans, including small business people, and should therefore be defended. He was concerned that if something was not done to deal with the competition from the Brazilian chickens, then the Mozambican poultry industry might face the same fate as has overtaken the cashew processing industry.
Source: AllAfrica
27 July 2005
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