Watch: Pandemic forces Mozambique to amend State Budget – Maleiane

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Watch: Pandemic forces Mozambique to amend State Budget – Maleiane

3:28 CAT | 29 Sep 2020

Screen grab: Miramar

Mozambique’s Minister of Economy and Finance, Adriano Maleiane, estimates that the Mozambican state will have lost 21 billion meticais in revenue (€249.5 million) as a result of the coronavirus pandemic by the end of the year.

The Mozambican government will this week submit to Parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, a proposal for a State Budget (OE) amendment which addresses the impact of Covid-19 on public accounts,.

Minister of Economy and Finance Adriano Maleiane spoke to the press on Monday, on the sidelines of a meeting with the deputies of the Planning and Budget Commission (CPO) of the Mozambican Parliament.

“Naturally, when there is a drop in revenue, there is always a need to rearrange priorities, so that the larger [macroeconomic] goals are not severely affected,” said Maleiane.

The government official estimates a loss in state revenues of 21 billion meticais (€249.5 million) by the end of the year.

“We have to ensure that what we planned for Health and Education will suffer a minimum of negative effects, through a redirecting of priorities in order to face the shortfall which is taking place,” he stressed.

Minister Maleiane said that Mozambique would miss the goal of 235 billion meticais (€2.79 billion) in projected revenues for this year because of the drop in economic activity resulting from Covid-19.

Revenues, he continued, would fall to 215 billion meticais (€2.55 billion) this year, with tourism the sector worst affected.

The new amended State Budget would also reflect the external support that the country had received and the changes in relation to economic growth figures.

The 2020 State Budget had projected a 4% growth in Mozambique’s gross domestic product (GDP), but this figure has already been revised down to 2.5% in the final document approved by the Assembly of the Republic. Meanwhile, the latest revision points to a GDP growth of between 0.8% and -1.2%.

Mozambique had by Monday (September 28) reported 59 Covid-19 deaths and an accumulated total of 8,288 confirmed cases.

The Covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than one million lives from more than 33.1 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by French news agency AFP.

Africa has suffered 35,440 confirmed deaths among the more than 1.4 million people infected in 55 countries, according to the latest statistics.

The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China. After Europe succeeded China as the centre of the pandemic in February, the American continent now has the most confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths.

Source: MIramar