Seven cashew-processing factories closed in Nampula, affecting 6,000 workers – O País

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Seven cashew-processing factories closed in Nampula, affecting 6,000 workers – O País
Seven cashew-processing factories closed in Nampula, affecting 6,000 workers – O País

Africa-PressMozambique. In the cashew sector, from 2015 to 2020, looking at the raw nut produced and processed in Mozambique and then exported, there is a difference of 297,000 tons, which is equivalent to more than US$49 million in foreign exchange lost to smuggling.

In the 2020-2021 campaign, for example, the country produced 144,823 tons, of which 26,670 tons were officially exported and 35,888 consumed domestically. This leaves 82,265 tonnes not on the official record, a testament to how strong the smuggling networks are and how badly they affect the industry.

The Condor factory, located in the administrative post of Anchilo, in the district of Nampula, is one example of those forced to close its doors this year because of the problems which plague the sector, one of them being a lack of raw material. The unit, which opened in 2008, took in raw cashew from various districts in Nampula province, which is responsible for 50% of the raw cashew produced in the country.

Condor employed more than 3,000 workers, but, from September, 2020, began to show symptoms of the crisis that led to its permanent closure this year.

The community living near the Condor factory had found jobs there. Now, subsistence farming is the only refuge for the many unemployed. Laura Adriano is one of them. She worked for Condor from 2011 until the end. “I was in the shelling sector. I haven’t received any compensation yet,” she said.

Lelo Estêvão, also from the same community, says he worked in the factory for 11 years and also became unemployed. “Life is very difficult. That factory gave us a lot of work here,” he complained.

The crisis in the cashew sector has lasted a long time, and in the last five years has reached alarming levels as a result of illegal trading rings and the export of raw cashew nuts. Legislation currently in force in the country stipulates that priority must be given to supplying the domestic processing industries when the marketing season opens at the end of each year, and that only the surplus can be exported.

“Since the cashew industry joined the National and Provincial Development Program 15 years ago, we grew from nothing to 100,000 tons, and it was in our commitment and the demand of our government that by 2020 we should be able to process 100,000 tons. For reasons of force majeure we went backwards, and that year processed no more than 25,000 to 30,000 tons,” Yunus Gafur, president of the Cashew Industry Association, explains. Gafur says 6,000 workers had been made redundant as a result of the closing of seven factories in Nampula province alone.

The government has recently launched consultations on the revision of legislation regulating the cashew sector, and it is hoped that the current problems will inspire the approval of a law that will further protect the national cashew processing industry.

Calculations suggest that, in five years, Mozambique has lost more than US$49 million in foreign exchange through smuggling, through which channel a ton of raw cashew nuts can be purchased for as little as US$200.

By

Ricardo Machava

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