Moz gets $500m poverty boost
2007-07-03 15:21
Maputo - The United States has announced the implementation of diverse projects valued at more than $500m aimed at reducing the levels of poverty in northern Mozambican provinces.
The US embassy in Maputo's information officer, Angelo Fernandes, said that the executive council of the US government's Millennium Challenges Corporation (MCC) recently approved $506.9m to reduce poverty indices by funding economic projects in selected districts of the country's poor northern provinces.
He said the various economical intervention projects, which included water reticulation and sanitation, roads rehabilitation and agricultural projects would promote investment and create opportunities to Mozambicans who lived in the north of the country.
MCC was a co-operation of the US government with the main objective of funding development projects in some poor states of the world.
Since 1992, after more than three decades of wars, Mozambique now had registered one of the highest development indices in Africa, with an average of eight percent each year.
Fernandes said: "To maintain this growth, it is necessary to tap the potential of the northern provinces, which are lagging behind although they have about 10 million people representing the bulk of the country's 19 million people."
- SAPA