Mozambican Agriculture Minister Higino de Marrule has said that the Lower Limpopo region in the south of his country has produced 24,000 tonnes of rice in the past five years, Rádio Moçambique reports.
The state-run radio station quotes Mr Marrule as saying, during the opening of the rice harvest in Gaza province on Saturday, that the region was capable of producing that amount of rice because of the support of Chinese companies.
Mr Marrule urged farmers on the Lower Limpopo to use techniques taught by Chinese advisers to increase their output and productivity, Rádio Moçambique says.
In November a Chinese website, Sina News, reported that China Railway 20 Bureau Group Corp. had trained 29 farmers in the region, with the support of Nanjing Agricultural University in China and the Confucius Institute at Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique.
