The Institute for Agrarian Research of Mozambique (IIAM) will benefit from an investment of three billion meticais, in the next two and a half years, for the improvement of infrastructures for vaccine research and seed production fields, with the objective of increasing agricultural production in the country, announced today, in Maputo, the President of the Republic (PR).

"My Government has decided to allocate for the next two and a half years of this cycle, three billion meticais for the requalification of vaccine research laboratories and pre-basic and basic seed production fields," said Filipe Nyusi, in his speech at the opening of Mozambique's first agrarian research symposium, which is being held in the Katembe district.

The PR justified the investment in the certainty that the development of the agrarian sector starts with the "linking of research [and] production through extension workers."

"Some of that money [has already been delivered]. I believe [about] five percent is already circulating in your laboratories. At any moment we will again deliver modern laboratories, because we don't have much time," Nyusi promised.

The Government's idea, according to the PR, is the development of technological solutions adapted to family sector farmers considering the socio-economic habitat of the rural population.

Throughout 47 years of independence only nine percent of farmers use certified seeds, said Nyusi, considering that "we cannot allow more years to be lost or to pass without starting the process of definitively solving this primary problem.

The PR acknowledged that the amount is not enough to solve the problem in two and a half years [the remaining period to the end of his second term], so he stressed the need to accelerate the steps.

"We have to start running. You start running and then the rest will go on," he said.