Despite all this, cotton remains the 7th export commodity in general and ranks 3rd amongst traditional export commodities. It is also a special important crop for rural livelihoods and development, ensuring cash incomes for more than 1.5mn of rural citizens.

Like everywhere in the world, the cotton industry in Mozambique is influenced by national policies, organization and assistance to the farmers, pests and diseases, weather patterns, as well as international market dynamic. As a consequence, we witness a variation of the national output, ranging, in our days, between 25,000 to 35,000 tons of lint, far below the peak production of 70,000 tons of lint obtained in the past, on the season 2011/12.

Forecasts for 2018/19

For the season 2018/19, Mozambique expects to produce about 23.000 tons of cotton lint. Reasons behind these poor figures are, amongst others, unfavorable weather conditions along the seasons, especially the “Idai” and “Kenneth” cyclone that devastated the Center and North of the country, farming inefficiencies, as well as market inefficiencies of our private sector and the volatilities of price and exchange rate.

Within the framework of the Cotton Value Chain Revival Program that Mozambique is implementing, every single piece of the cotton value chain is addressed. With this program the government wants to create a cotton sub-sector competitive and sustainable, aimed at increasing production and productivity and adding value.

The Cotton Value Chain Revival Program

Regarding the competitiveness of the Mozambican cotton component, the country has already modernized the three cotton classification labs in terms of infrastructure, equipment and training of the classifiers. Next year, the country will start using instrumental certification of fiber in all these labs. Furthermore the country has been working on establishing a barcode system in order to track the national fiber.

Source: Republic of Mozambique, Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Mozambican Cotton Institute

extract from the statement on the occasion of the 78th Plenary Meeting of the ICAC, Brisbane, December 2019