Mozambique: Govt orders extinction of public company Correios de Moçambique – O País report

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Mozambique: Govt orders extinction of public company Correios de Moçambique – O País report

8:20 CAT | 26 May 2021

File photo: O País

The Council of Ministers on Tuesday approved the decree that extinguishes the Public Company Correios de Moçambique, divesting one of the assets which most weighed in the State accounts, O Pais reports.

Created in June 1981, as a State Company (EE), the Correios de Moçambique company became a Public Company (EP) in September 1992, with legal personality and administrative, financial and patrimonial autonomy, exercising its activity in subordination Ministry of Transport and Communications.

The company has as its object the planning, establishment and operation of the national and international public mail service. However a recent evaluation showed that Correios de Moçambiquet lost ground due to the emergence of technological competition and digital platforms, which relegated physical mail to the past .

“We have a company, in particular, which concerns us, which is Correios de Moçambique. Its business object, the market in which it operates, has been outdated. With the emergence of several technological means, the company was not able to follow the evolution and reinvent itself ”, said, a week ago, Raimundo Matula, executive director of the Institute of Management of State Assets (IGEPE), as if foreshadowing the deadly sentence from the institution in question.

With a chronic deficit situation, the Government reached the limit and definitively ended the financial injections that had been systematically giving and determined the end of the line for the company.

“Correios de Moçambique does not fall into the category of strategic and structuring company. First, because the postal service law, 1/16, ended the postal service monopoly and everything can be done by the private sector, ”said the Minister of Economy and Finance, Adriano Maleiane, at the end of yesterday’s ordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers.

Owner of enviable assets, especially regarding real estate infrastructure, the now defunct Correios de Moçambique exists the scene leaving hundreds of workers in uncertainty as to their jobs. The IGEPE is currently conducting, according to internal sources, an assessment of the firm’s assets and considering, the possibility of either redirecting them or using the assets to finance other public companies with more losses.

DOMUS to be privatised

In the same line of relieving the State from toxic assets, the Council of Ministers also determined the total withdrawal of IGEPE from DOMUS, SA, a public limited liability company in which the State, represented by IGEPE, held 80% of the shares.

Three decades later, the Government determines that the state-owned shares must go to total sale, opening space for privatisation.

“DOMUS is a kind of real estate company and was created, mainly, to manage the 33-storey building (33 Andares), which is a building that has reverted the State in the framework of restructuring. As a real estate company, the decision made was that the 94% which belong to the state are sold and the other 6% to remain private, ”explained Adriano Maleiane.

State-owned shares in DOMUS will be sold, according to Maleiane, following the mechanisms that are provided for in the law as the State’s assets are sold through public tender.

“For all these companies, IGEPE is mandated to implement the subsequent phases that will lead to the liquidation of the companies and, later, the destination to be given to the product [revenue] of this process”, added Minister Maleiane.

By Dário Cossa

Source: O País