29/01/2010

Is Mozambique’s elite moving from corruption to development?

O investigador Joseph Hanlon, do International Development Centre da Open University do Reino Unido, é um observador insistente da realidade moçambicana. A apresentação que fez num seminário em Outubro de 2009 tem anotações curiosas sobre as ligações da nomenklatura:

«The main company partly owned by the President is INTELEC, which is involved in electricity transmission and equipment, telecommunications, gas, consulting, cement, tourism, construction, Tata vehicles, and fishing. The company is headed by Salimo Amad Abdula, who is also head of the Mozambican business association, which gives President Guebuza a direct role in all Mozambican business. Intelec also holds 5% of Vodacom Moçambique, the private mobile telephone company which competes with the state operator and Abdula recently became chair of the board of Vodacom Moçambique, Cornelder de Mocambique which has the port management contracts for Beira and Quelimane is partly owned Guebuza (the majority is owned by Cornelder in the Netherlands and CFM, the state railway company).

Guebuza children and relatives have interests in various companies, often in participation with other children of the elite, and are involved in telecommunications, mining, construction, tourism, environmental issues, petrol stations, and a new grain terminal; several consultancy companies have also been established. Armando Guebuza is also a shareholder of some of them, particularly through the family company Focus.

Guebuza family companies have a number of projects around natural gas from a large field on the coast at Inhambane. Intelec had a gas fired power station supplying electricity to Vilankulo, the nearest city to the gas field. It is part of a group (linked to the French company Suez) building a second power station along the existing pipeline in Moamba, in part to sell electricity to South Africa. A company owned by another member of the family has the contract to convert and sell natural gas as motor fuel.»
 
Joseph Hanlon
in «Mozambique's elite - finding its way in a globalised world and returning to old development models»