Africa-Press – Mozambique. Félix Machado, the recently elected new president of the Beira Commercial Association (ACB) who took office last weekend, advocates an urgent review of fees and taxes, maintaining that no country can develop with such high taxes as Mozambique’s.
“We have individuals in the government who studied economics – individuals with PhDs. They are well aware that high taxes and fees do not contribute to development. This is the first lesson in economics: high taxes don’t bring growth, not in any country in the world,” Machado states.
The representative of the business community in Sofala highlights that raising taxes frequently is not the path to development.
“We are going to broaden the tax base. We are going to make more people pay and we will therefore have more taxes circulating. This is the fundamental question. Taxes must be reduced, and immediately,” Machado continues.
To find healthy solutions, Felix Machado advocates open dialogue between government and the business class.
“These solutions will bear results if the government is receptive. If the executive wants to play games with us, entertain us, just hold meetings for a five-year period without doing anything concrete, the impact on the economy of high fees will continue to be disastrous,” he said.
“The proof of this is the fact that, since independence to this day, Mozambican companies remain only SMEs. There are few large Mozambican companies. They [the companies] will never grow. Is this what we want? Not! ACB’s dream is that the national business community begins to emerge in the category of large companies and this is only possible if the government understands what we are saying and cooperates.”
The business class in Sofala is sure that the government knows that their concern is legitimate and questions the indifference of the great national economists who are in the state apparatus, but do nothing.
“There are specialists in economics and they took their degree at the expense of the state. What is the role of these specialists when they are in their offices? What do they analyse? Many rely on the law. They say that the law is like this… . We hope that we will not hear these speeches again, because this law is ours. We are the ones who produce it, unless it has been copied and we do not understand what we are copying,” Machado concluded.
