Accounts on the red at Correios de Moçambique

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Accounts on the red at Correios de Moçambique

3:00 CAT | 11 Sep 2019

File photo: O País

The public company Correios de Moçambique [Mozambique Post Office] posted losses of about 10 million meticais at the end of last year, with operating costs surpassing revenues. A debt of over 50 million meticais owing to workers, among other obligations, put the accounts of Correios de Moçambique “in the red”.

The 2018 accounts compiled by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), consulted this Tuesday by “O País”, show losses of 10 million meticais, the company’s revenues of 187 million meticais failing to cover operating costs of 197 million meticais.

In terms of cost-revenue comparison over the last three years, 2018 was the only year in which there were losses. In 2017, this company’s revenues were approximately 392.9 million meticais, while operating costs stood at 385.2 million meticais. In the previous year, in 2016, the gains were 333.8 million against costs of 314.9 million meticais.

This negative result, according to data compiled by the National Institute of Statistics, comes at a time when postal activity has been significantly improving. In 2018, the Post Office’s 93 postal stations handled more than 132,000 items of national and international correspondence, as well as around 80,000 parcels.

It is known that the Board of Correios de Moçambique has embarked upon the restructuring of the company, which it sees as the way out of the crisis, reducing the work force, selling some of its properties, and partially privatising through the sale of almost half of its shares.

April strike

In financial distress, half a hundred workers at the Post Office went on strike over late payment of salaries, overdue holiday allowances and the thirteenth salaries of 2017 and 2018.

The company acknowledged the problem and said that it would lay off almost half the workforce in order to deal with the crisis. Police were called in to calm down strikers outside the headquarters building in Maputo.

Correios de Moçambique, E. P. is a public company, endowed with legal personality and with administrative, financial and patrimonial autonomy, which carries out its activity under the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

By Edson Arante

Source: O País