Mozambique: Business Community Decries Growing Insecurity.

Businessmen are concerned with the wave of kidnappings for later ransom, as well as the ongoing armed and terrorist attacks in central and northern Mozambique that make investment projects impossible.

The concern was raised by Álvaro Massingue, current vice-president of Mozambique's influential private sector association, the CTA, and B-list candidate for president of the association.

This year alone 11 cases of kidnappings have been registered, involving businessmen or their families.

"This is a situation that worries our team," he said. "We will do everything in our power to ensure that the wave of kidnappings is eliminated because it is negatively affecting investment projects

"Our proposal is greater collaboration with the police and justice authorities so that the environment of insecurity within entrepreneurs is overcome," he added.

Police Chief Bernardino Rafael acknowledged in an interview with daily “Notícias” that the kidnappings are holding back investments and decapitalising the state.

"Terrorists will not enter the country for fear of being kidnapped and investors will not stay in national territory," Rafael said. "So we can say that the kidnappers are enemies of the state because that tax that should be paid is being made impossible," Rafael added, stressing that the state will not survive without a tax and therefore the police is doing everything to capture the kidnappers and hold them responsible for their criminal acts.

Elections at CTA are scheduled for 17 December, and Massingue is running against his current president, Agostinho Vuma.

"Our aim is to ensure that the interests of our members in particular and of the private sector in general are respected and safeguarded," Massingue said at a press conference held on Monday in Maputo to present the vision of his group.

He said that the basis of the application was to restructure the business association in order to design, implement and monitor economic policies and strategies that are capable of responding fully to the challenges that are imposed on the Mozambican economy.

This electoral moment comes at a time when the world, including Mozambique, is facing a deep economic and social crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic which impacts are felt on all fronts.

Massingue promises to create an "investment fund" so that "in the medium and long term micro-enterprises can be transformed into small, small into medium-sized and medium-sized into large enterprises".