Mozambique says cashew smuggling has cost it $7 million in three years
About 35,000 tonnes of nuts left the country through illegal channels, the agriculture minister says. He wants smuggling treated as a crime and the trade tracked digitally.
Maputo — Mozambique has lost 457 million meticais, about US$7.2 million, to cashew nut smuggling over the past three years, the agriculture minister, Roberto Albino, has said, according to the state news agency AIM.
Around 35,000 tonnes of cashew nuts were diverted from formal channels into illegal trade over that period, he told the first session of the country's Cashew Committee.
"We are not paying the taxes"
Albino said the diversion deprives Mozambique of foreign exchange from exports to India and Vietnam, the main buyers of its raw nuts. "We are not declaring it and we are not paying the taxes," he said.
He argued that smuggling should be criminalised rather than handled as an administrative offence, and called on the justice system to step in.
Tracking each sale
The minister also recommended digitalising the marketing of cashew so that transactions can be traced from the farm gate onward.
Cashew is one of Mozambique's traditional export crops and is grown largely by smallholder farmers in the north of the country. Mozambique was once among the world's leading producers, and successive governments have tried to rebuild both the harvest and local processing so that more of the value stays at home.
Albino did not say how much of the smuggled crop crossed land borders and how much left by sea, and AIM's report gave no details of prosecutions.
This report is based on reporting by Agência de Informação de Moçambique, via AllAfrica.
