Mozambique: Chapo discusses investment with World Bank
Mozambique: CIP calls for transparency in budget to combat Covid-19
2:40 CAT | 27 Mar 2020
FILE- For illus«tration purposes only. [File photo: DW]
The government of Mozambique has issued three different budgets for the fight against Covid-19, and the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP) is demanding clarity on the destination of the money. In turn, the Ministry of Health (MISAU) says it has already presented a plan to partners.
The Centre for Public Integrity (CIP) has published a note questioning the lack of clarity on the part of the government of Mozambique in defining the financial resources needed to combat Covid-19 in the country. The civil society organisation is demanding that the executive publish a response plan with a detailed budget, indicating where and how will it spend the amounts requested from partners and indicating any state co-participation.
According to CIP, the cost surveys carried out by the government to combat coronavirus are confusing, with differences between the budgets prepared by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and the Ministry of Health (MISAU).
The discrepancies can be seen, the organisation says, in the three different budgets that have emerged over the last five days. The figures are contained in two internal MISAU documents and in information made public by the MEF.
On March 17, the MISAU Preparedness and Response Plan (PPR) for the Covid-19 outbreak – which was not released to the public – was budgeted at US$2.2 million (just over €2 million). Three days later, a letter from MISAU to a strategic partner requested US$28.3 million (just over €26 million euros) for the same goal.
What confused the CIP analysts even more is that the MEF announced last Tuesday (23/03) that the country would need US$703 million [€640 million euros] to fight the Covid-19 pandemic – a figure more than 300 times higher than the PPR prepared five days earlier had predicted.
New hospital network?
“When we looked at this figure, the largest part (€510 million euros) would be used to build 79 district hospitals. To be built when? In time to be used to deal with this outbreak?” asks Celeste Banze, economist and researcher at the CIP, pointing out that the Covid-19 crisis requires short and medium term measures, and that the government does not specify where these hospitals would be built.
The letter to which the CIP has had access requests €26 million for the construction of infrastructure, installation of intensive care equipment, and the purchase of hospital beds and an ambulance. The idea of building field hospitals had been replaced by the construction of “resilient structures”.
“No concrete actions”
The budget chapter in the Preparedness and Response Plan (PPR) for the Covid-19 outbreak details only an estimate for ‘vigilance’ in combating Covid-19, which would amount to just over €1.6 million. The document does not offer any information on the remaining amounts.
“Also, the vigilance plan does not include concrete actions to be implemented in the informal sector, which shows greater resistance to quarantine,” Banze notes. She points out that, in South Africa, markets were being disinfected daily, and the same could be done in Mozambique.
Asked by DW Africa to comment on the CIP note, Deputy Director of Public Health Benigna Matsinhe said that MISAU was working with a “planned budget equivalent to just over €26 million”, which had already been “presented” to partners.
Matsinhe did not comment on any other aspects of the CIP note, but stressed that the fight against coronavirus in Mozambique was multi-sectoral and dynamic, as demanded by the characteristics of the disease.
Source: Deutsche Welle
Show comments
Also read
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.