Portugal's Prime Minister, António Costa, made a positive assessment yesterday of the two-day official visit to Maputo and the 5th Luso-Mozambican Summit, highlighting the "great harmony and political will" of the two countries to strengthen cooperation.

"I think that this summit was frankly positive in all areas. From the political point of view, there is in fact a great harmony and political will to strengthen cooperation between the two governments," said António Costa, speaking to journalists, to make an assessment before the end of the official visit to Mozambique, which ended yesterday.

According to Lusa, Costa also considered that "from the political point of view, from the economic point of view, from the military and security point of view, [it was] clearly positive.

At the end of a meeting with the Portuguese community at the Portuguese School of Mozambique in Maputo, the head of government noted that the economic and investment forum between Portugal and Mozambique "had a large participation of Portuguese companies" and pointed out that the two countries signed at this summit "a set of new financial instruments to support investment by Portuguese companies here in Mozambique and also in the PALOP countries as a whole.

The Mozambican government also "gave a very strong message of desire that Portuguese companies come to Mozambique, invest in Mozambique, help Mozambique," the Prime Minister considered.

"We have a new set of cooperation areas to develop and, above all, a common will, as I haven't seen for a long time, from the Mozambican authorities, from the Portuguese authorities to work together to help develop Mozambique and also to strengthen the traditional friendship between our people and our countries," he stressed.

In this balance, António Costa also referred to "the international and security dimension, not only in bilateral cooperation from the military point of view," but also because Portugal is a member of the European Union and Mozambique is a member of SADC [Southern African Development Community], and together they can "unite these forces, for example, to face the challenge of terrorism in Cabo Delgado.

"We lead the European Union mission here in Mozambique and we are together with the Mozambican authorities, with their SADC partners, with Rwanda, to effectively respond to the terrorist threat in Cabo Delgado," he said.

In his speech moments before, the Prime Minister left "a special word" for the Portuguese who are in Cabo Delgado.

"We must all continue mobilized, the international community, to support Mozambique in this fight against terrorism," which constitutes a "global threat," he argued.

In his speech, he also pointed out that "the best representatives of what Portugal is is each and every one of the Portuguese who live and work in Mozambique.

Pointing out the "continuous effort" that must be made to improve "the quality of consular services more and more," Costa said that a "dream I would like to see come true" is to be able to "have a consulate on a cell phone" and "permanent contact with the Portuguese authorities" using these devices.

And he specified that the objective is not to close the consulates, but to give the opportunity to "do directly", via cell phone, that which does not need to be done in the consulate in person, "in order to reserve the consulate for that which it is not really possible to do remotely".

Earlier, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, João Gomes Cravinho, pointed out that the Portuguese in Mozambique number 40,000 and make up a community that "has given and continues to give so much to the country.

And he said that 18 protocols were signed between the two countries during the V Luso-Moçambican Summit, agreements that "mark new stages in this relationship.

After a meeting with Portuguese businessmen, the Prime Minister met with members of the Portuguese community in Mozambique, where he inaugurated the cafeteria and presented António Pinheiro, former Portuguese consul in Maputo, with the insignia of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator.