Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), a Mozambican NGO, accuses the government of using funds earmarked for the fight against Covid-19 as a slush fund for channelling resources to public companies “without any transparency”.
In an analysis entitled “Covid-19 funds used as slush funds”, signed by researcher Leila Constantino, CIP says the executive transferred US$5.3 million (€4.5 million) to six public companies in the transport and communications sectors, without any transparency.
The money was reportedly taken from the approximately US$700 million (€596 million) that the Mozambican government got from the international community for the fight against the pandemic.
“It is worrying that resources that are extremely important and essential in other priority sectors in this period of pandemic, such as health, social protection and education, have been allocated to public companies with a structural record of poor management and without a clear objective,” the analysis said.
The study criticised, in particular, the fact that Correios de Moçambique (the postal service) was one of the companies that benefited, despite being in the process of being dissolved.
State flag carrier airline Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique (LAM), the municipal transport companies of Maputo, Matola and Dondo, as well as Empresa Aeroportos de Moçambique also received funding, Constantino said.
“The worrying factor is that no information was disclosed about the rationale, motivations, objectives, goals and the specific areas in which this support was allocated to the beneficiary public companies,” the text reads.
The CIP notes that these companies benefit annually from State subsidies, and it is not understandable why they should receive funds earmarked for the fight against Covid-19.
“In 2020 alone, these companies benefited from subsidies ranging from 20.3 million meticais (271,000 euros) to 181.6 million meticais (2.4 million euros),” the study said.
CIP notes that the allocation of funds to public companies was not foreseen in the state plan to combat the new coronavirus, having resulted from changes not disclosed by the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
“This raises the need for the changes to the plan to be made public, with the reasons behind these changes also being presented,” the analysis said.
