Coordinating council to discuss ways out of “difficult economic year”

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Coordinating council to discuss ways out of “difficult economic year”

3:37 CAT | 30 Mar 2016

O Pais / Minister of Economy and Fonances Adriano Maleiane

The Ministry of Economy and Finance’s first coordinating council is meeting today to define strategies in a year that looks likely to prove as difficult as 2015.

The coordinating council is meeting at a time when the country is already experiencing reduced output and rising prices as a result of drought in the south and floods in central and northern parts of the country.

Among other topics, the council will discuss economic growth and inflation.

Standard Bank recently lowered its estimate of the country’s economic growth for this year, and the UK’s Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) predicts that the agricultural sector will grow less in the next five years than it did between 2010-2015.

Maleiane will chair the cabinet’s first Coordinating Council meeting in this five-year period. Ministry of Economy and Finance officials at central and provincial level, as well as many guests. will be attending the event.

The Mozambique Tax Authority initiative entitled “Promoting Fiscal and Budget Literacy”, which aims to find better ways to explain the importance of tax to citizens, is rolling out in a year in which the authority has promised intensified tax collection campaigns.

It comes against the backdrop of an economy that has inherited problems from last year such as the depreciation of the metical, which has raised prices generally in an economy highly dependent on imports.

Simultaneously, the price of the country’s main export products and the amount of foreign direct investment have both fallen, reducing the currency funding capacity.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance also has to take in account the effects of political and military tension in the centre of the country.

Council will also consider on other economy and finance portfolio subjects such as the public debt and the priorities for public investment, among others.

The event is held at a time when the ministry is complete in terms of top leadership, with the newly swearing in of Isaltina Lucas to the post of deputy minister, completing a team whose mission is to improve the control of public finances, eliminate non-productive spending and ensure macroeconomic balance.

Source: O País