As mentioned before, currently the pressure to the land in rural areas has been increasing greatly. As consequence the land market gain a new dynamic given the fact that in some potential zones in the country, land is becoming scare and expensive.
People mostly from the cities are moving to the rural area with the objective of investing in agriculture and build up “quintas” a sort of lodges in its primary stage. The quintas have a small size (0.5-4ha) sometime more, and they produce vegetables fruits and small animals, and those products are used for consumption and the surplus are sold in urban areas. The implantation of quintas have implications on the rural plan related with the development of small urban centers within the rural areas.
Why people sell their land?
Usually people sell their land rights, when they have more than one plot and do not have resources to exploit it, or they think to change from living place to another, or are facing problems in their life and they are supposed to solve them urgently; or get difficulties to develop agriculture mainly in irrigation schemes.
“Mariana Jonasse 36 old said that she has 4 children, and she is divorced, she works in company as cleaner and earns very little money. Her house suffered from the last rains and her child has started to study at primary school. She has small machamba1 near the river where she get some food, but this year she was fearing that she will not get anything because is not raining and she have a lot of debts. Therefore she decided to sell her land got cash of 20 000 000, 00 Mts2. Now she rehabilitated her house and could paid the debts”.
Seems that the prices of land vary greatly according with quality of land, location near or not from the river, or if its in area with higher population density where land is exhausted, size of land, and the existing infrastructures within the plot.
“Mr. Andrade lives in Maputo city, he is a public servant, he said that bought his land of 5ha from one family in 1997. He paid 50 000 000,00 Mts and he is doing agriculture, he grows cabbage and sell it to the city. He said that he earns enough money”.
There is no any formal criteria to estimate the price of selling land, however its increasing significantly with time.
“Mr. Gerуnimo is a businessman who said that he bough land in Matola Rio and paid 19 000 000, 00 Mts in 1997 for 2 ha, and now he said that he can sell the land about 70 000 000, 00 Mts without a lot of discussions.”
People just fix the prices according with specific situation apart of those factors considered before, they take in consideration of their needs or problems to be solved at that moment, the scarcity within the area, making up the opportunity cost of land.
What should be clear is that land cannot be sold according with Land law in Mozambique. In this stage people just sell their land use rights or titles. Most of those people who the buy land are not local, but mostly from the cities including foreigners coming from neighboring counties with objective of investing in agriculture mainly from (South Africa and Zimbabwe). There are very few situations where people sell titles of land, use considering that very few people have got it. But in the near future this process will become more dynamic.
Footnotes:
- Machamba are an area where people cultivate crops.
- 1USD is equivalent to 22 000,00 Mts
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