Maputo, Aug. 27, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal's secretary of state for tourism, trade and services, Pedro Machado, criticised the bureaucracy in Mozambique's business environment, considering that it "hinders" growth, development and the promotion of investment.
"Bureaucracy is a matter that companies and entrepreneurs suffer from, and it is not a friend of the economic environment and often jeopardises what is the ambition for growth, development and investment," said Pedro Machado in Maputo, during the launch of the 2025 Directory, which addresses Mozambique's potential for business, quoted today by the media.
Machado stated that barriers in the business environment are not limited to Mozambique and called for joint efforts by the government and the private sector to remove them, as they hinder the development of countries.
"Companies are the ones who develop, who create business, who create jobs, who create development, and the state doesn't have to get in the way," said Pedro Machado.
In the same statements, he once again showed Portugal's openness to supporting Mozambique in training staff and sharing experiences in the economic sector.
"We want to make Portugal's experience in training available to you, whether through the hotel school project or through other projects that strengthen Mozambique's presence and competitiveness in tourism (...) or in other projects that we have developed in Portugal, which today are responsible for the success that we are experiencing," said Pedro Machado.
On Monday, Pedro Machado said in Maputo that Portugal wants to strengthen cooperation with Mozambique in tourism, promising Lisbon's efforts to materialise the Hotel School project in that country.
Speaking to Lusa at the opening of the 60th edition of the Maputo International Fair (Facim), the largest exhibition of goods and services, the Secretary of State said that on this visit to Mozambique, his agenda is to discuss the Hotel Escola project with the Maputo government, which "is decades old and has still not been materialised".
"This is always our goal, to strengthen economic relations more and more, to strengthen the conditions so that more Portuguese companies can come to Mozambique (...). Portugal is now the 12th most competitive country in terms of tourism, we want to strengthen these ties, we want to have more and more participation from tourism itself in Mozambique," he said at the time.
According to Pedro Machado, Portugal aims to advance in Mozambique through training projects in hospitality and tourism, capacity building, and professional internships, including the implementation of the Hotel School initiative.
"Portugal is the only European country that has a network of public tourism schools. We therefore have training and national and international experience that we want to make available to Mozambique," he concluded.
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