Visas for foreigners to invest or work in Mozambique are more expensive - A Verdade
DW / The Mozambican Tuna Company (EMATUM) is one of the companies with shares held by IGEPE and the Mozambican state
An audit conducted by Mozambique’s highest audit authority, the Administrative Tribunal, has revealed irregularities in companies operating with the government’s Institute for the Management of State Holdings (IGEPE) participation. Journalist Fernando Lima says the problems run even deeper.
An audit of the Institute for the Management of State Holdings (IGEPE) quoted by the Mozambican newspaper ‘A Verdade’ reveals violations of regulations, mismanagement and lack of transparency at several companies owned by the institution.
But Mozambican analyst Fernando Lima says that the auditing tribunal performed a merely “legalistic analysis”. In an interview with DW Africa, the director of the weekly ‘Savana’ says that the case calls for substantive political intervention by the authorities.
DW Africa: Is an investigation of this institution, so close to political power, realistic?
Fernando Lima (FL): All the garbage has been ending up in the IGEPE, but so also has all that is profitable, that belongs to the state. And there is a great lack of definition regarding the IGEPE shareholding portfolio. This leads to the Institute having major institutional problems. For example, it has to show muscle in relation to the lead Ministries over certain companies that were either previously subordinates to, or, in practice, are still subordinate to, those same Ministries.
The Administrative Tribunal has performed a legalistic analysis of the problems that the IGEPE faces, but its problems are much more serious and profound than those the Tribunal finds. So there is a need for substantive and political intervention in relation to the IGEPE. Meaning that either the IGEPE has its hands free to act and manage its subsidiaries prudently, or it is just another of the political instruments available to the government to simply mimic prudent management of state-owned companies.
DW Africa: Do you think that the Mozambican state has an interest in changing that, since, according to the Administrative Tribunal document, the IGEPE has been dealing with problematic companies for over fifteen years?
FL: Yes and no. Signs from the government clearly indicate greater freedom in relation to the IGEPE – more autonomy and more decisions of a truly economic character. And, in recent times, many of these prerogatives and indications have come from the prime minister himself. But they are only indications of a verbal nature made in public.
Now, regarding what happens in practice, I do not think that anything has changed substantially. Moreover, many of the managers appointed by IGEPE for its various companies are clearly political appointments, because the institute has to accommodate a number of individuals who are either former ministers or have provided services to the party. It is under pressure to accommodate these people in the economic apparatus. This is what the IGEPE has been doing over the last few years.
DW Africa: Why do so many projects and investments in Mozambique fail?
FL: Because many of the projects are not designed with the economic rationality they should be. We will not even mention the projects that are on the agenda right now and that everyone is talking about, but we can talk, for example, about sugarcane or jatropha projects. I do not know of any successful jatropha projects in Mozambique. All of them went bankrupt. Often there is no clarity about the projects themselves, and the IGEPE is called upon to intervene when it never had any say in these projects from the start.
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