Mozambique: Administrative Tribunal wants tax and customs courts in all provinces

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Mozambique: Administrative Tribunal wants tax and customs courts in all provinces

7:34 CAT | 25 Nov 2024

Image: Tribunal Administrativo de Moçambique

The Administrative Tribunal (TA) intends to establish tax and customs courts in all provinces of Mozambique, with a view to bringing services closer to citizens and ensuring greater procedural speed, President Judge Lúcia Maximiano do Amaral announced in Maputo.

By 2016, provincial administrative courts had been established throughout the country, including the city of Maputo, with jurisdiction over administrative litigation and prior monitoring of the legality of public expenditure.

“At the moment, the challenge facing the administrative jurisdiction is to expand the customs and tax courts to all provinces, assess existing conditions, and create new [courts] to take administrative litigation to the district level. It is a great challenge, but we will get there,” Lúcia do Amaral said at the 12th Ordinary Session of the Judicial Council of the Administrative, Tax and Customs Courts in Maputo on Wednesday.

So far, the customs courts operate in the city of Maputo, and in the provinces of Sofala, Nampula, Inhambane, Tete and Cabo Delgado, and are expected to be created soon in the provinces of Gaza, Niassa, Zambézia and Maputo.

Regarding tax courts, they are in operation in the city of Maputo, the provinces of Maputo, Sofala, Manica, Zambézia, Tete, Cabo Delgado, and the registry offices in Gaza and Inhambane, the latter two being helping relieve the city of Maputo of some of its responsibilities.

“While there is no capacity to create courts, we will be there to solve the people’s problems, or judges will leave to regularly go to these registry offices, whose conditions we will oversee,” she said.

The challenge facing the TA is the full implementation of customs courts in the provinces of Niassa, Zambézia, Gaza, Maputo and of tax courts in Inhambane, Gaza and Niassa.

Judge Lúcia do Amaral explained that, after the customs courts were installed, except for Inhambane, financial and human resources to ensure their full operation were still needed.

“For the courts of Tete and Cabo Delgado, the Superior Council of the Administrative Judiciary has appointed magistrates who are already there, but who are facing immense difficulties in their functioning. It is a struggle that we are fighting, but which we will win. We will focus on the expansion plans in the coming days,” said the TA president.

The provincial tax and customs courts require a large investment, from the creation of infrastructures and training of judges and support staff to the acquisition of goods and services.

“We must use the scarce resources available to find major solutions to achieve the planned objectives, in particular the expansion and approximation of tax and customs administrative jurisdiction in the provinces and districts,” Lúcia do Amaral said.

She stressed that monitoring the good management and use of public funds was the objective of the meeting in Maputo, to which end a study was underway for the creation of a Court of Auditors.

She reported that the TA was aiming at an administrative jurisdiction increasingly close to the citizen, and independent, efficient and effective, but that a necessary prior condition was peace.

In turn, the Secretary of State for the City of Maputo, Vicente Joaquim, observed that the motto ‘Rights in the Effective Expansion and Approximation of the Administrative Tax and Customs Jurisdiction at provincial and district levels’ was “a source of satisfaction and pride for us, because at city and district level, we will guarantee a tax and customs jurisdiction for the citizen, as well as control over the good management and use of public funds”.

Joaquim stressed that the motto urges the Council of State Representation Services in the city of Maputo to promote actions to combat corruption and integrity now and in future.

The event in Maputo was attended by the Attorney General of the Republic, the Ombudsman, former presidents of the Administrative Tribunal, by the Minister of Justice, Constitutional and Religious Affairs, and serving and retired judges, among others.

Source: AIM Moçambique