Mozambique: Expenditure on civil service salaries and wages grows 10% YoY in H1

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Mozambique: Expenditure on civil service salaries and wages grows 10% YoY in H1

1:40 CAT | 27 Aug 2024

File photo: TVM

The expenditure of the State of Mozambique on salaries and wages in the civil service grew 10.2% in the first half of the year, year-on-year, to almost 102.705 billion meticais (€1.436 billion).

According to the budget execution report from January to June, this is already 53.9% of the estimate for the whole of 2024 – 190,676 billion meticais (€2.666 billion).

This performance compares with 89.282 billion meticais (€1.248 billion) in the first half of 2023.

On August 7, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said in parliament that the implementation of the Single Salary Table (TSU), which has been the subject of much criticism, has reduced salary discrepancies, solving a decades-old problem in the public sector.

“The reform of salary policy in public administration, translated into the law on the single salary table, was designed to resolve clear salary discrepancies between civil servants and state agents with the same qualifications […], a situation that has characterized our public administration for decades,” Nyusi declared.

At stake is the crisis that has taken hold in the Mozambican state apparatus as the result of strikes and threats of strikes by civil servants, who are demanding better working conditions and protesting against delays and salary cuts which began with the implementation of the TSU, approved in 2022.

While acknowledging that the TSU has generated “noise”, Nyusi considered that the new Single Salary Scale brought “salary balance”, also highlighting the increase in the minimum wage.

“The minimum wage for civil servants has doubled, there has been an even greater [salary] increase in the defence and security forces and the salary gap between various levels has reduced substantially,” the head of state stressed.

The president also pointed out that the TSU had cut some subsidies and had a significant impact on the wage bill.

“Salaries had a strong component based on non-pensionable allowances. Each director, minister or president [of public institutions] had extraordinary payments, and there were many extraordinary payments. Now, most of these allowances have been incorporated into the base salary,” said Nyusi, stressing that the process, although necessary, involved “difficult and noisy mathematics”.

The implementation of the TSU was the target of strong opposition from several professional classes, such as doctors and teachers, with records of salary delays and cuts, including in the security forces.

Approved in 2022 to eliminate asymmetries and keep the state’s wage bill under control, the launch of the TSU caused salaries to soar by around 36%, from 11.6 billion meticais per month (€169 million) to 15.8 billion meticais (€231 million).

The TSU cost around 28.5 billion meticais (€410 million), “more than expected”, according to a document from the International Monetary Fund on the evaluation of the assistance program for Mozambique.

Source: Lusa