Macau businessmen want Mozambique casino

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, the closing day of the 2011 edition of FACIM, the chairperson of the Mozambican Export Promotion Institute (IPEX), Joao Macaringue, announced the Chinese request – but gave no details. “There are some Macau businessmen based in South Africa who came here, and they are interested in setting up a casino”, said Macaringue.

He said this was just one example of the many contacts made during the week long trade fair. The casino project, he added, was one of the proposals to make the new FACIM site, built just four months ago, profitable throughout the year.

“Interest has also been expressed in building hotels”, said Macaringue. “The Investment Promotion Centre (CPI), in coordination with the government, has taken Marracuene district as the reference point for all the initiatives now appearing to increase accommodation capacity”.

He added that IPEX is now working with the Maputo provincial and Marracuene district authorities in order to draw up a master plan for the ground granted to FACIM, which will make it possible to allocate particular areas to particular facilities.

Macaringue said that IPEX still has a plan to build a multi-use pavilion on the FACIM premises – but has not yet succeeded in raising the 45 million dollars of investment that will be needed.

But in addition to such a pavilion, IPEX faces the challenge of ensuring that facilities are available on the FACIM site so that it can be used all year round, and not just for the week or two of the annual exhibition.

In the short term, this will include improvements to the existing children’s playground, and the building of restaurants. Macaringue added that IPEX also hopes to use the premises for specialist fairs and meetings. For example, a livestock fair will be held within the next six months. He gave an upbeat assessment of this year’s FACIM. Despite FACIM’s move away from its original premises in central Maputo, thousands of people have visited the fair.

Macaringue said that by Saturday 63,000 people had visited FACIM, considerably more than the target figure of 60,000.