/ 1 November 1999

MOZ RURAL FUNDING SLOW

MOZAMBIQUE has been unable to secure donor funding to rebuild its rural rail network, slowing economic development in the country’s impoverished hinterland, said President Joaquim Chissano on Sunday. Donors and private investors are willing, he said, to help rebuild the country’s main export rail links between Mozambique and its neighbours but have been reluctant to provide funding for the smaller links between rural towns. Announcing that reconstruction of the first 15km of the 300km Cuamba railway line in Mozambique’s rural Niassa province had been completed, President Chissano said the government and state owned ports and rail company CFM paid for the work itself.