New Publisher Launched 24.10.2003   A new Mozambican publishing house, Plural Editores, launched its first book at a ceremony in Maputo on Thursday night.

The book is a new edition of Mozambique's Civil Code (which dates back to 1967), but also including relevant post- independence legislation, such as the 1997 land law and its regulations, and the laws on water, the environment, energy, forestry and mining.

It includes as an appendix the draft family law, currently winding its way through the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, which will substantially alter parts of the Civil Code in favour of the rights of women and children.

The book was published in partnership with the consultancy firm KPMG, and KPMG representative Filipe Mandlate declared "This is the most complete and up-to-date collection of civil legislation ever published in Mozambique".

Plural Editores is essentially a subsidiary of Porto Editora, the largest publisher of school textbooks in Portugal.

Porto Editora won the contract for producing text books for the new Mozambican curriculum for basic education, which will be implemented as from 2004.

Vasco Teixeira, of the Porto Editora Group, told the ceremony that Plural will produce school texts, and scientific and technical books. He pledged that it will be committed to Mozambican education and culture, and hoped to make "a decisive contribution to the better training of future generations".

He said the company believed it also has a social role to play, and so it has produced posters, for distribution in schools throughout the country, on AIDS, informing pupils how the disease is, and is not, transmitted.

Education Minister Alcido Nguenha welcomed the establishment of Plural, and praised the "high quality work" of Porto Editora.

He believed this kind of initiative helped consolidate "the partnership between the government and the private sector".

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