Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Institute for Multi-party Democracy (IMD), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), said on Monday that the Mozambican state budget needs greater transparency.
There are “challenges related to transparency in revenue management”, and there is a “deficit in the implementation of legislation, in a context of limited resources,” said Dércio Alfazema, leader of the IMD, after a seminar with members of parliament.
The organisation is calling for “stricter political supervision” by members of parliament, particularly concerning “accountability” and “transparency in the management of public resources,” it said in a statement.
The meeting, which included an information session aimed at members of parliament on budgetary issues, was held on Saturday in the town of Bilene, in the south of the country, just days before the start of a new parliamentary session in which the budget for 2022 is one of the items on the agenda.
The president of the Planning and Budget Commission, António Niquice, noted that the advent of decentralisation decreed in 2018 in an understanding between the government of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) and the main opposition party, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), made it difficult to divide a budget that was already scarce.
“It is a budget that used to be ‘one’, for action by the provincial government,” while “now it is divided into three. This is indeed a difficult situation, but these are the resources we have, and we have to share them out.
The budget that was previously channelled to the actions of the provincial governments, with “decentralisation, has passed to three bodies: provincial executive councils, the council of provincial state services and provincial assemblies,” the IMD statement noted.
At the meeting, Niquice also said that the country should aim for an “increase in exports” to raise “more foreign currency” and broaden “the tax base”.
Covid-19 has complicated the scenario, he acknowledged, especially in a country like Mozambique: “It is difficult to redistribute in a context in which resources are scarce” and “the needs are enormous,” the MP stressed, also pointing to the withdrawal of direct support for the state budget by international partners as another difficulty.
Direct support was withdrawn in 2016 after it was discovered that Mozambique had incurred hidden debts of US$2.7 billion (€2.3 million) for public maritime defence companies that never worked – a case currently on trial in Maputo with 19 defendants.
The Mozambican government forecasts economic growth of 2.9% in 2022 and a deficit of 157 billion meticais (€2.1 billion) – around 14% of GDP.
The proposed Economic and Social Programme and state budget for 2022 were approved on Thursday at an extraordinary cabinet meeting and sent to parliament.
