The Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme of the Agrifood Economics Division at FAO was invited to attend and present findings on reference price formulas for soybean, sesame and sunflower seeds during the dissemination event of the new regulation that seeks to strengthen and boost the oilseeds value chain. 

The dissemination event, organized by the Instituto do Algodão e Oleaginosas de Moçambique (IAOM) – the Cotton and Oilseeds Institution of Mozambique – and attended by approximately 85 stakeholders from the oilseeds subsector, took place in the central port city of Beira on 22 March 2023, during which the MAFAP team, together with the representatives from the FAO Mozambique Office, presented the results of initial simulations of the proposed reference price formulas.

Three studies were carried out by the MAFAP team on pricing formulas for seeds for soyabeans, sesame, and sunflower in order to determine a reference price for each of strategic oilseeds as designated by the government. By doing this, the farmer receives a fair price from the first buyer, providing a sort of economic stability for soybean, sesame and sunflower seeds producers.

The IAOM meeting also gave the MAFAP team the opportunity to consult and validate data with district and provincial delegates, other government agencies’ representatives throughout the country, along with traders, producers and other key actors to improve the quality of the data used to calculate recommended reference prices for soybean, sesame and sunflower seeds, as well as to gain access to historical data on the oilseeds prices.

As a follow-up to the meeting, the MAFAP team is now engaged in updating the draft report and data based on the data shared during the consultation during the group work.

Mozambique is one of eight MAFAP III partner countries in sub-Saharan Africa under the programme’s third phase (2022–2027), and was previously a partner country under the second phase (2016–2021). The programme has provided policy monitoring support in the form analyses on public expenditure and the price incentives facing producers of key agricultural commodities. The country is also one of the first to receive support on policy prioritization, a new, innovative initiative under MAFAP III that utilizes economy-wide modelling to help governments align their public budget on food and agriculture to the best outcomes in terms of inclusive agricultural transformation.

The MAFAP programme has over the years produced a number of studies and provided policy support that have led to reforms in Mozambique’s public policies, including reducing post-harvest losses in the maize value chain, as well as a new approach to forecasting cotton production used by the IAOM. 

For more information, please contact [email protected] or MAFAP’s focal point in Maputo ([email protected]).