Luanda - The management of the irrigated perimeters of the provinces of Huíla, Bengo, Moxico, Cuanza Norte, Cuando Cubango and Cuanza Sul will be handed over to the provincial governments as of Thursday, as part of the Angolan Government's Deconcentration and Administrative Decentralization Program.
These are the seven largest farming areas in the country, namely the irrigated perimeters of Gangelas and Matala, in the province of Huíla, Caxito (Bengo), Luena (Moxico), Mucoso (Cuanza Norte), Missombo (Cuando Cubango) and Waco-Kungo (Cuanza-Sul), whose management was transferred from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to the provincial governments.
The formal signing of the Terms of Transfer of Management Competence of these perimeters took place on Thursday in Luanda, in a ceremony led by the Minister of State for Economic Coordination, José de Lima Massano.
After the signing of this document, which was the responsibility of the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, António Francisco de Assis, and the respective provincial governments, the governor of the province of Huíla, Nuno Mahapi Dala, considered the transfer of the management of arable land to the local authorities as an assertive decision, to improve the monitoring of the main agricultural areas of the country.
Speaking to the press, the minister said he hoped that the agricultural areas transferred would really serve to make the available land profitable, with an increase in national production and diversification of exports, with a view to benefiting the Angolan populations.
For this, he stressed, it is necessary for the business class to establish partnerships with the State to invest in the agricultural sector and take better advantage of the potential that the soils offer.
In the same vein, the provincial governor of Cuando Cubango, José Martins, said that, with the aforementioned transfer of competences, local authorities will be able to boost and intensify actions to provide spaces to farmers and effectively contribute to increasing food production in the country.
He said that there is a lot of interest in the exploitation of agricultural areas by family farmers and producers organized in cooperatives, who may see their requests resolved in the near future, as a result of the process of handing over land management to the provincial authorities.
“With the act witnessed today, we will better follow up on the processes of ceding the land to farmers, who are eager to produce food for the province, in particular, and for the country, in general,” he added.
In addition, governor José Martins said that the massification of production in the irrigated perimeter of Menongue (Cuando Cubango) could safeguard the protection of the perimeter, inhibiting acts of vandalization that destroyed most of the infrastructure installed in this area previously.
Still to combat acts of vandalism of public property, the government official added that the authorities are triggering community surveillance and inspection mechanisms, through the forces of public order and civil society.
The vice-governor for the Political and Economic sector of Cuanza Sul, Emília Tchinawalile, stated that, with the transfer of perimeter management, productive growth in the region is expected to accelerate, as it was one of the reference areas in supply of food products for the country.
In turn, the Secretary of State for Agriculture and Livestock, João da Cunha, stated that the transfer of land to provincial governments will make it possible to speed up the processes of granting spaces and be closer to producers.
He pointed out the seven transferred perimeters as the main irrigated areas with a high potential for agricultural production in the country, in addition to there being other small irrigated areas that are already under the supervision of provincial governments.
Despite the transfer of agricultural areas, João da Cunha assured that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry will continue to provide its technical and institutional support for the management of the perimeters, as well as monitoring farmers.
On the other hand, he clarified that the areas transferred to the provincial governments were already infrastructured, with the installation of irrigation equipment, but over time these infrastructures were vandalized, leaving the facilities inoperative.
On the occasion, the Minister of Territorial Administration, Dionísio Manuel da Fonseca, considered the continued exercise of administrative deconcentration and decentralization to be extremely important, with a view to the widespread transfer of functional powers from the center to the provincial governments.
He highlighted that the process of transferring powers plays a fundamental role in strengthening the revenue collection capacity of the State's local administration bodies.
As an example of the importance of administrative deconcentration and decentralization, the minister pointed out the substantial increase in revenue collection at municipal level, which reached around 18.5 billion kwanzas in 2022, against only Kz 3.8 million recorded in 2017, when the Citizen Portal was implemented. QCB/DOJ
