Mozambique: Civil servants’ proof of life delayed until December

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Mozambique: Civil servants’ proof of life delayed until December

4:48 CAT | 19 Jul 2024

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Integrity]

Mozambique’s government has asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to postpone the “proof of life test for all civil servants, which should have been carried out in June until December.

“Despite progress, we were unable to meet the structural benchmark of completing the life test and general audit of all civil servants (June 2024) due to operational constraints, but we are committed to completing it by the end of December 2024,” according to a letter sent by the Mozambican authorities to the IMF managing director, as part of the fourth review of the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) programme, which concluded this month.

The aim is to “eliminate ghost workers”, said the letter addressed to Kristalina Georgieva, dated 21 June and signed by the minister of economy and finance, Max Tonela, and the Governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Rogério Zandamela, which Lusa saw on Thursday, which confirms that Mozambique did not achieve, in this evaluation, that Structural Indicator, one of the four defined by the IMF for this period.

The IMF announced on 9 July that it will immediately disburse another $60 million (€55.5 million) to support Mozambique under the country’s assistance programme.

In a statement, the IMF said that the government had concluded the regular consultation process with Mozambique for 2024 and the fourth review of the 36-month ECF agreement, which “allows for an immediate disbursement” equivalent to $60.03 million “usable for budget support”, bringing the total disbursements to Mozambique under this programme to $330.14 million (€304.9 million).

In this fourth evaluation, the IMF previously said that the programme’s performance “was mixed”, with three of the four structural benchmarks “met” – the “proof of life” of civil servants remained to be done – and two of the four quantitative performance criteria “met”.

In January, following the conclusion of the third evaluation of the ECF programme, the Mozambican government committed to the IMF to complete the “life proofing” of all civil servants by June of this year.

Lusa previously reported that the Mozambican state’s operating expenses fell by 2.3% in 2023 compared to the previous year to 330,495 million meticais (€4.78 billion), but staff costs exceeded the budget.

According to the Mozambican Ministry of Economy and Finance’s economic and social balance of the 2023 State Budget, to which Lusa had access, this performance corresponds to 97.1% of all planned state operating expenses, valued at almost 316,919 million meticais (€4.6 billion).

The biggest item was personnel expenses, which, according to the document, “exceeded the limit” of 176,961 million meticais (€2.569 billion) of the initial allocation, totalling 203,002 million meticais (€2.947 billion) for the whole year.

In 2022, the state spent 194,466 million meticais (€2.823 billion) on staff, namely salaries and other remuneration.

The Mozambican government previously acknowledged that the reform of the civil service salary scale, which began to be implemented in 2022, had “higher costs than estimated” and that it intends to go ahead with a programme of cuts.

Lusa previously reported that the implementation of the Single Salary Table in Mozambique, strongly contested by various sectors of the civil service, cost around 28.5 billion meticais (€410 million), “more than expected”, according to the IMF, which defends the implementation of this measure.

Source: Lusa