Despite the various criticisms that the Sustenta Project has suffered from civil society, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development says that the goals of his sector's Five-Year Plan have been achieved over the last five years.

Celso Correia, however, says that the biggest challenge is milk production, which from the outset, five years ago, was already proving to be an "Achilles heel".

"Although we have seen growth at times, we had regions of the country that produced milk, namely Sofala and Manica, and our ability to attract investment to this sector and compete with more developed import markets may have been one of the most decisive factors for us not having had the same growth as other products and crops in the sector," he said, quoted by "O País" .

The minister was speaking at the opening of the National Planning Meeting, the aim of which for three days is to evaluate the area's performance over the last five years.

Despite this progress and the fulfillment of the Five-Year Plan, he said that the ambitions of the sector, the country and the state are far from being fulfilled, due to the existing challenges, from infrastructure to training farmers.

Correia said there was a need to make a "correct" assessment of the progress being made and the pace at which it was being achieved, without neglecting demographic factors.

"One of the greatest pressures we have on both food security and national production is the demographic factor, which will also determine the efficiency and effectiveness of public intervention in the agricultural sector, so don't forget this factor," he said.

Celso Correia also spoke about the situation of the extension workers, specifically the irregularities in the receipt of salaries and acknowledged that this has affected the sector's performance, pointing to the adversities that the public accounts have had in recent years, due to the Single Salary Table, as the source of the problems, but he assured that his sector, along with the others, is doing everything it can to ensure that the problem is regularized. (Source: O País)