Nyusi urges diplomats to regain trust of partners

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Nyusi urges diplomats to regain trust of partners

7:42 CAT | 06 Oct 2017

Notícias

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Thursday challenged the country’s diplomats to continue promoting the image of the country and to spread messages of peace so as to regain the confidence of international partners.

Nyusi was speaking at the opening of a two day meeting of the Coordinating Council of the Foreign Ministry, which is being held under the theme “The Experience and Contribution of Mozambican Diplomacy to Better Respond to the Challenges of the Current National and International Conjuncture”.

The President urged diplomats to seek innovative ways of diversifying mutually advantageous partnerships, with an impact in the short, medium and long term.

He recommended that Mozambique’s diplomatic missions abroad should transmit the message of the efforts and measures the government has been implementing so that the country retains credibility in the world economy.

“It is urgent to regain the trust of our cooperation partners”, stressed Nyusi. “Mozambique must continue to be a partner that offers stability for the flourishing of foreign investment. Our efforts to guarantee a lasting peace and a continual flourishing of democracy and the rule of law should be projected to our friends and partners in the outside world”.

To project this image of trust, he continued, the diplomats should base themselves on such factors as the stability of Mozambican institutions, the regularity of democratic processes such as elections, and the recent discoveries of natural resources.

The definitive cessation of hostilities between the defence and security forces and the Renamo rebels is a priority in the short term, stressed Nyusi. This was a message of peace and hope that Mozambican diplomacy should take to the world.

The President took the opportunity to urge Foreign Ministry staff to avoid acts of corruption and to ensure responsible and rational management of financial resources and other assets.

Two former Mozambican ambassadors, to Moscow and to Washington, Bernardo Xerinda and Amelia Sumbana, were charged with financial crimes last year by the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption (GCCC), but their cases have yet to come to trial.

But the main reason why Mozambique lost the trust of international partners was the illicit borrowing under the previous government, headed by President Armando Guebuza.

The Guebuza government issued illegal guarantees for loans of over two billion US dollars from the European banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia to three security-related companies, which added 20 per cent to the country’s foreign debt. When the scale of this borrowing became public knowledge in April 2016, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) accused the Mozambican government of concealing the true size of the country’s debt, and suspended its programme with Mozambique.

Other partners followed suit, and the 14 donors who once provided direct support to the Mozambican state budget suspended all future disbursements. To date, that aid has not resumed.

Source: AIM