V. Pernechele presenting MAFAP

The results for the first implementing year of the project "Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agriculture Policies" (MAFAP) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Mozambique stood at the centre of a discussion in a technical workshop held in the country's capital, Maputo, on Friday (19/06). Attending the event were technicians from the Mozambican ministries of Agriculture and Food Security (MASA) and Economy and Finance (MEF) as well as from the Research Centre for Agricultural and Food Policies and Programmes(CEPPAG) of the Faculty of Agronomy and Forestry Engineering of Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM).

The workshop was organized by the MASA Directorate of Economics, with technical assistance from FAO, within the scope of the MAFAP project. Since last year, FAO has been implementing the MAFAP project in Mozambique, through a formal partnership with MASA and CEPPAG in order to establish a country-owned system of monitoring, analysing, and reforming of food and agricultural policies. The project aims to develop the capacities of the national team to monitor and analyse the effects of policies on the most relevant commodity markets, in order to identify policy problems that constrain the development of the agricultural sector.

"The work done by the MAFAP team in MASA and CEPPAG highlights how market inefficiencies and policy measures adopted by the government can impact the structure of price incentives for different agents along key agricultural value chains", FAO policy analyst, Valentina Pernechele, said at the workshop. "Despite the import tax applied on rice – with the objective to protect domestic production – rice farmers were penalized during the period 2005-2013 by the market environment." This is because farmers always faced price disincentives, the analyst added. "To a lesser extent, maize production also faced obstacles, with consumers in the southern areas of the country paying higher prices for maize than in an ideal market structure."

A roundtable debate highlighted the need to further investigate the driving factors behind those constraints, especially for maize and rice which are key commodities for food security in Mozambique. The participants concluded that it is important to articulate options for formulating or reforming market and production supporting policies based on solid analytical evidence.

Through MAFAP, FAO assists MASA in the formulation of suitable agricultural reforms. Friday's workshop thus offered the technicians an opportunity to discuss areas and issues on which further impact analysis should be undertaken to contribute to the decision-making process in the Mozambican agriculture sector.

The presentation of the results of both the public expenditure analysis in support of agriculture, and the thematic studies of the project took place at the workshop. The results of the studies are also linked to the analysis of the incentives and disincentives in the production and trading of two other products, namely cashew and cotton.

MAFAP is being implemented in Mozambique and nine other African countries: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda and is financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Government of the Netherlands and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).