Mozambique Elections: MDM accuses Constitutional Council of ignoring evidence of theft of votes - ...
Photo: TVM
President Filipe Nyusi said on Thursday that natural disasters and cuts in international aid had prevented his government from achieving all the goals set out in the Five Year Plan ending in January 2020.
“There were cyclones, floods and droughts in some provinces, and the [international community] friends who were helping us said: ‘We will not help now’,” President Nyusi told a rally in Lalaua district, Nampula province, northern Mozambique, more than 1,500 kilometres from Maputo.
Floods in the centre and north of the country and drought in the south as well as cyclones in all the three regions have been recurrent in Mozambique in recent years. The impact of these phenomena has combined with an exponential rise in public debt stemming from loans endorsed by the previous Mozambican government between 2013 and 2014.
Following the revelation of the debts recently declared unconstitutional by the Mozambican Constitutional Council, the main international donors to the State Budget cut aid.
President Nyusi also pointed out at the rally that prices of raw materials in the international market had fallen, reducing earnings of foreign exchange by Mozambique – another factor preventing the full achievement of the government’s Five Year Plan goals.
“The price of our cotton and cashew nut outside [the country] has fallen,” he said, noting that these two products that are among Nampula’s main exports.
President Nyusi pointed out that the government he had headed since January 2015 had been prevented from building all the infrastructure included in plans for the five-year term ending in January 2020.
Despite the difficulties, he continued, his government had managed to build many social and economic assets such as hospitals, schools and roads.
“During the five years, we did a lot in Nampula. We directed a lot of our attention to Nampula,” the country’s most populous province, and home to the largest number of voters.
With the general elections of October 15 of this year already in sight, Nyusi’s public appearances are being seen as pre-campaigning, accompanied as he is by phalanxes of Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo) members, and his speeches reflecting on his five years of governance and replete with promises for the cycle starting in 2020.
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