Mozambique is recovering a large part of the cargo it previously lost to other operators in the region for reasons of safety and quality of rail and port infrastructure, the chairman of state port and rail management company Portos e Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique (CFM).

According to daily newspaper Notícias, Rosário Mualeia said that this recovery was one of the results of investments in modernising facilities, which increased the effectiveness and efficiency of the services provided.

In the last few years CFM has carried out repairs on the railways of Limpopo, Ressano Garcia and Goba, in the south, which continue to operate at below capacity due to limitations imposed by a lack of rolling stock.

Despite a number of solutions tested by the company, including refurbishing trucks abandoned at stations along the railroads across the country and a repair programme at general workshops, the supply of trucks has never been able to match growing demand for cargo transport in the countries in the region.

Mualeia said that at the three-way meeting held recently in Maputo and in which the railway companies of Mozambique, south Africa and Swaziland took part, CFM made a commitment to not only increase levels of production, from a point of view of cargo transport targets, as well as to increase the quality of that service.

One of the impacts expected, according to the source, was increasingly to attract more cargo to and from neighbouring countries such as South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as from other states from the regional interior, with which memorandums of understanding have been signed on this matter.

Mualeia recognised that the issue of rolling stock, particularly trucks and engines, continued to affect the company’s services but added that the board of directors was waiting for authorisation from the government to close loan agreements with some banks. (macauhub)