Mozambique cuts costs after food riots

September 08, 2010|Associated Press

MAPUTO, Mozambique — Mozambique’s government is reversing bread and water price increases that had touched off deadly riots, the planning minister said yesterday.

Demonstrators clashed with police last week in the capital, Maputo, over hikes in the costs of bread, water, and electricity. The health department put the death toll at 13.

Planning Minister Aiuba Cuereneia said after attending a Cabinet meeting that the recent 20 percent increase in the government-set price of bread — which had followed a year of steady increases on the staple in this impoverished African nation — would be immediately reversed.

He said an increase in the price of water also would be reversed, but that higher electricity tariffs would remain.

The government also was reducing the cost of an 11-pound bag of rice by 7.8 percent.

“These are measures we are taking to reduce the cost of living in Mozambique,’’ the minister said. He referred to the protests only to condemn the violence.

The government was cutting back elsewhere to compensate. Cuereneia said that the government was suspending stipends for those chairing the boards of public companies and increasing some customs duties.

Mozambique’s government has said that keeping food prices low is difficult because so much of the country’s food has to be imported. The southeastern African nation grows only 30 percent of the wheat it needs.

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