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government in the Boletim and DINAGECA refer to concessions of approximately 655,000
hectares. 59
Data from selected districts in five provinces suggests that at the provincial level, 606,000
hectares have officially been granted for agriculture, grazing, and forestry in the same period
(see graph 3 and table 3). 60 We repeat that the data available for agricultural concessions
reflect only those official and legal concessions that have entered or completed the registration
or concession process. In each province investigated, officials stated that the concessions
reported represented only a fraction of actual concessions. For example, in Manica Province
officials stated that the concessions granted at that level, 126,259 hectares, represented less
than one-half of the total concessions made. In fact, a number of private farmers in many
locations said that they had received land concessions at the provincial level, but had not yet
begun or completed any type of land registration. 61 Consequently, the amount of land
conceded in the provinces probably far exceeds the recorded figures.
Although we do not yet have data for the remaining five provinces or for all districts in
the five provinces where we have collected data, the differences in publicly reported
concessions between the provinces (606,000 hectares) and those listed in the Boletim (68,000
hectares) are indicative of a major and consequential problem. A much larger area of the
country is being granted to private foreign and domestic interests at the central level, but a
substantial number of concessions, which are not being recorded in Maputo, are being granted
at the provincial level. Central government is largely "unaware" of these concessions.
Concessions made by the MOA to date far exceed the 68,000 hectares cited in the Boletim
daRepublica and the 724,000 hectares claimed by DINAGECA, Maputo.62 Indications are
that the MOA has granted concessions in excess of 3.48 million hectares for agriculture,
hunting, and joint-venture enterprises. 63 These data are presented in table 1 and illustrated
in graph 3.
59. As is the case for concessions granted at the central level, the fact that these land transactions have been
recorded at the provincial level does not indicate whether the land was acquired legally or extralegally.
60. Again, we emphasize that we have data for only some of the districts in five of the ten provinces.
Further, the data for the provinces indicate that most of the concessions at this level were made during the period
from 1991 to 1993.
61. See Alexander (1994); also, Jocelyn Alexander, personal communication, December 1993.
62. Concessions may not need to be registered and reported in the Boletim da Republica to be official.
Jenifer Garvey says that although titles must be published somewhere in an official gazette to be legal, they often
go unreported (personal communication, November 1993).
63. In this report, land granted to joint ventures is classified as land for "direct" and "indirect" production.
Land classified as direct production is controlled and planted directly by the joint-venture enterprise, while land
classified as indirect production is planted by the smallholder sector. The joint-venture enterprise is usually able
to control the use of this land, since it is granted monopolistic control of markets for the commodities produced.
The areas of indirect production, also know as "areas of influence," are often very large in comparison to land
held under direct production. For example, in Cabo Delgado Province the joint venture LOMACO has
approximately 39,000 hectares of direct production land and monopolistic control (i.e., indirect production) of
approximately 1.449 million hectares. In this report we consider indirect production land as a category of land
concession.