The government of Mozambique will start preparing projects to be submitted to the US$10 billion fund for Africa announced last week by the government of India, the Mozambican prime minister said recently.

Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho Rosário, who was speaking to Mozambican news agency AIM on the sidelines of the Third India/Africa Summit, in New Delhi, said his government intended to focus the projects in the areas of agriculture, water supply and restructuring the post office.

Rosário said that in the meetings held with the New Delhi authorities he found there was a lot of interest in strengthening bilateral cooperation in the agricultural sector and that an Indian team was expected to arrive in Maputo in the near future.

“I think that the agricultural sector is of great interest to the country. Mozambique cannot only rely on raw materials such as gas and coal, but we also need to have the population itself go through a development process,” he said.

The extractive industry was, however, also subject of bilateral talks, and Rosário found that India remains interested in projects related to gas exploration.

The Indian government Thursday pledged a credit line of US$10 billion and US$600 million dollars in aid over the next five years, noting that it pledged to work with the continent to develop information technologies and reduce the digital divide.

The President of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi visited India in August, accompanied by 60 businesspeople, and the two governments signed two memoranda of understanding in the economic area and decided to move on to military cooperation, especially in the field of maritime safety, taking advantage of the fact both countries have coastlines on the Indian Ocean. (macauhub/MZ)