MAPUTO, Oct 25 (AFP) - Mozambique wants an upcoming World Bank aid package to include funding anti-AIDS programmes, a government spokesman said Thursday.
The request was made at the start of annual consultative talks between Mozambique and the Bretton Woods institutions Thursday.
Government spokesman Pedro Couto said there had been a general consensus that HIV/AIDS posed the greatest single threat to Mozambique's development programme and therefore deserved maximum attention.
"The HIV/AIDS epidemic is so critical that all attention must be paid to the problem," said Couto.
According to latest revised government data, the HIV prevalence rate in Mozambique is now about 15 percent of adult population with an estimated average daily infection of about 700.
The government also raised the need for natural disaster prevention and mitigation, saying it also deserved World Bank attention, Couto said.
Mozambique's economic recovery programme had already gained momentum under Western-backed structural reforms before all the achievements were washed away by consecutive floods last year and early this year.
Economic growth had reached an average of 10 percent but has now dropped to 2.1 percent due to the catatrophic floods.
However, Couto, who is the director of the department of studies in the ministry of planning and finance, remained optimistic, saying he expected economic growth to recover several by percentage points to up to eight percent over the next two years.
The talks on Thursday and Friday are to review progress in government's poverty reduction and development programmes and assess the country's future financial requirements.
Planning and Finance Minister Luisa Diogo estimates that government needs at least 600 million US dollars a year for the next few years for its programmes to succeed.
Mozambique has been implementing a structural adjustment programme backed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 1987 and since then it has received around eight billion dollars in external aid.
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