Mozambique draws a hard line about consumer lingua franca

Mozambique’s government has ordered that goods on store shelves not in Portuguese must be removed, news agency AIM has reported.

The National Inspection of Economic Activities (INAE) announced that all products sold in Mozambique should be identified in the official language of the country, and should no longer be labelled only in foreign languages.

The measure aims to protect the consumer’s rights, namely the rigorous knowledge of the product they are buying and its characteristics

According to Rita Freitas, the head of INAE, speaking to reporters at a joint conference with INNOQ (Mozambique’s National Institute for Normalization and Standards) and the Health Ministry, the inspectorate will be working to raise the awareness of traders so that they respect the legislation on the matter.

“If traders continue to break the rules, INAE will impose heavy fines, and licenses will be withdrawn”, she said.

“The first punishment will be a fine equivalent to 40 times the minimum wage paid in the public administration”. (This is about 350,000 meticais – 5,460 US dollars at the current exchange rates).

“If the economic agent continues to violate Mozambican legislation, the fine will be doubled to 700,640 meticais. For repeat offences, the fine could reach 1,401,280 meticais. If this continues, INAE will ask the competent authorities to withdraw the license”, she added.

Legislation banning the entry and circulation of products without information in Portuguese language has been in place for over 18 years.

The director-general of INNOQ, Geraldo Albazine, explained that work had already been done with economic agents to facilitate the labeling of products in Portuguese.

He said that 4,651 labels have been submitted for approval, of which 2,580 have been approved and 2,071 have been rejected. Only after the label has been finally approved can it be used on goods sold on the Mozambican market.

Nazália Macuvele, a representative of Health Ministry’s National Medicines Regulatory Authority, stressed the importance of labeling products in Portuguese, saying that “there are people who are allergic to certain substances and these should be shown on the label, as is the case with food containing pork derivatives, as part of the population does not consume them.”

“The expiry date, storage conditions and origin of the products should also be labeled”, she added.

In the case of medicines, she said, the product’s registration number must appear, which means that this product has been authorized by the Health Ministry to circulate on the national market.

In November, INNOQ introduced a Conformity Assessment Programme (PAC) to put an end to the entry and circulation of substandard and counterfeit products in the country. – AIM