Parliament commissions will quizz Mozambican govt on debt – Within the next few days

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Parliament commissions will quizz Mozambican govt on debt – Within the next few days

9:01 CAT | 10 May 2016

O País / Parliament's standing Commission photographed on Monday May 9 2916

Within the next few days, the Mozambican government must answer questions from the working commissions of the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, about the country’s public debt.

The spokesperson for the Assembly’s governing board, its Standing Commission, Mateus Katupha, told reporters on Monday that the Plan and Budget Commission and the Defence and Public Order Commission intend to quiz the government.

This time the request to summon the government to parliament came from the ruling Frelimo Party, during a meeting of the Standing Commission on Monday morning.

“The head of the Frelimo group (Margarida Talapa) raised the question of the need for the government to come to the Assembly to clarify the situation of the country’s foreign debt”, said Katupha.

This is something of a volte-face on the part of the Frelimo parliamentary group. When, in mid-April, the main opposition party, the rebel movement Renamo demanded that the government be called urgently to the Assembly to explain the debt, the Frelimo majority voted down the Renamo proposal.

According to Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario, addressing a press conference on 28 April, the country’s total public debt, as of the end of 2015, was 11.64 billion US dollars. Of this sum, 9.89 billion dollars is the foreign debt.

The foreign debt spiraled out of control in the closing years of the previous government, led by President Armando Guebuza. In just two years, over two billion dollars was added to the public debt in the form of government guaranteed loans to the Mozambique Tuna Company, EMATUM (850 million dollars), Proindicus, a state company charged with maritime security (622 million dollars), and Mozambique Asset Management, MAM (535 million dollars).

Until April, neither the Mozambican public, nor the country’s partners, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), knew about the Proindicus and MAM loans. The undisclosed loans led the IMF to cancel a mission to the country initially scheduled for mid-April, and to suspend the second instalment of a 283 million dollar loan from the Fund’s Standby Credit Facility (SCF).

Others followed suit. All 14 donors and financing agencies that provide support directly to the Mozambican budget have suspended this form of financial aid.

Katupha said that, after the government has explained the debt to the working commissions, the Standing Commission will analyse the information, and a debate in a plenary session of the Assembly may be scheduled.

Renamo boycotted this session of the Standing Commission, partly because it said it received notice of the meeting “very late”, and partly because it regarded the formal agenda, which was simply to authorize President Filipe Nyusi to make a state visit to China from 16 to 21 May, as “irrelevant”.

Renamo spokesperson Antonio Muchanga demanded that the Standing Commission ought to be discussing the public debt. Ironically, that is precisely what the Commission did, but on Frelimo’s initiative rather than Renamo’s.

The parliamentary group of the second opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), called on the Assembly to take “clear measures” towards violations of human rights, particularly the alleged existence of a mass grave in Gorongosa district.

The Gorongosa authorities have strenuously denied there is any mass grave in the district, but journalists have photographed and filmed over a dozen bodies dumped in the bush near the site of the supposed mass grave, but over the district boundary in Macossa district, Manica province.

Katupha said the Standing Commission recommended that the Assembly’s Commission on Legal and Constitutional Affairs should investigate so that the Assembly can take “an adequate and responsible position”.

Asked whether the Assembly will hold an extraordinary sitting to discuss the public debt and the alleged mass grave, Katupha said nobody raised such a demand in the Monday meeting. The sitting of the Assembly which began in February has not ended – it was merely suspended in mid-April, and will resume in late June. Katupha guaranteed that the public debt will be the first item on the agenda when the sitting resumes.

Source: AIM