Mozambique’s exports and imports registered a reduction of 24% between the months of January and September 2020 compared to the same period of 2019, due to the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, according to data released on Friday, February 19, in Maputo City, by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
This is an impact that was particularly due to the closure of borders, the decline of value chains and the oscillation of markets.
These factors led the Government, through the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in
partnership with the European Union, under the “Promote Trade” program, to organize a webinar on the “Dynamics of Exports to the European Union even in times of covid-19 in Mozambique”.
The choice of the European Union as the motto for the event lies in the fact that, in the last 10 years (2011-2020), it is the main trading partner, appearing as the destination of 38% of total exports, corresponding to 14,158.06 million US dollars. In 2019 and 2020, for example, the country exported to that market 504.1 and 197.3 million dollars, respectively.
Essentially, the event aimed to publicize the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), a legal instrument that regulates trade relations between African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries with the European Union, ratified by Mozambique through Resolution No. 12/2017 of October 16.
The agreement establishes and introduces a new regime of economic and trade cooperation with the European Union, allowing to maximize the preferential treatment it has in trade relations, export to the EU free of quotas and customs duties, benefit and use more flexible and advantageous rules of origin in the production of the goods it exports, of cheaper, better quality and more innovative inputs.
On the occasion, the Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, Ludovina Bernardo, said that after four years of the EPA, the government intends to update and integrate better the Operational Plan of its implementation.
better integrate the Operational Plan of its implementation, enhance, professionalize and modernize the capacity of micro, small and medium enterprises, foster the development of industrialization, promote the digitalization and electronic commerce, as well as massify the market information and business opportunities and existing investments.
For Ludovina Bernardo, the event was an opportunity to reflect on “(i) the constraints, challenges and the real impacts of covid-19 in trade transactions with the EU; the need for the prioritization of agribusiness value chains, industry, tourism and services; the modernization of the administrative, procedural and institutional ecosystem to support foreign trade, as well as on and; the best ways of integrated dissemination of the Economic Partnership Agreement as an opportunity to maximize our exports.”
For his part, the Ambassador of the European Union in Mozambique, António Sanchez-Benedito Gaspar, stressed that despite the impact of covid-19, the balance of the implementation of the Economic Partnership Agreement is positive, taking into account that “there was (before the outbreak of the pandemic) a growing trend in terms of increased trade and economic exchanges between Mozambique and the EU.”
“This is an agreement that establishes a relationship of progressive and asymmetric reciprocity, destroying barriers and building economic and trade bridges,” said the diplomat, for whom solidarity and cooperation, associated with capable, flexible and resilient instruments and institutions are indispensable in times such as the that the world is going through.
“É a challenging time, but we must always have a positive, optimistic outlook
and a strategic and long-term long-term vision.”
