Eduardo Sengo, Executive Director of the Confederation of Economic Associations – CTA, revealed, on Thursday, that the mining company Vulcan has been canceling contracts with suppliers since it arrived in Mozambique, in April last year, after the departure of the Brazilian company Vale.
“We have been receiving several complaints from businesspeople and it is not just a review, but also cancellation of contracts and without justification of debt, to include other companies, particularly Indian ones”, said Eduardo Sengo, quoted by Carta de Moçambique.
Sengo also denounced the fact that Vulcan, which explores mineral coal in Moatize, Tete, canceled contracts without compensating the winners of the competition. “When a contract is canceled, the company must be compensated for some reason, but that doesn’t even happen.”
Therefore, in Sengo's view, the justification for Vulcan's stance with the rise in coal prices on the international market is false, especially because when Vale abandoned the Mozambican market and Vulcan replaced the Moatize mines, the price was high.
The CTA's understanding is that Vulcan is more concerned with profits, regardless of what is done (illegally) to obtain them. “We have received reports that when Vulcan launches a tender and a certain company wins, it then comes under pressure to lower the price before signing the contract, even after carrying out the entire bidding process, at the risk of losing the business to a outside.
Furthermore, Vulcan and other companies do not respect small and medium-sized supplier companies”, he revealed. However, the CTA did not provide the numbers of companies affected by Vulcan's behavior, despite being from various areas. The CTA regrets the Government's inertia in the situation by not creating conditions to meet the objectives for SMEs in their business.
“What we noticed is that when there is a large operator that comes to the country to operate, if it is South African, South African suppliers are hired and when it is Indian, they are also privileged Indian companies. However, the Government must look at this”, he said.
