MOZAMBIQUE’S National Union of Cashew Workers has called on the country’s parliament to pass a bill currently before it which will protect the cashew processing industry by banning, for a ten-year period, the export of raw cashew nuts. Union secretary-general Boaventura Mondlane said that the government’s policy of liberalising the trade in cashew nuts, imposed by the World Bank, has led to the almost total paralysis of the processing industry. Despite studies between 1996 and 1998, which recommend prioritising the processing industry the government continues to strip the industry of protection. As a result, the raw nuts were exported to India, and the local processing factories found themselves starved of raw materials, Mondlane said.