Mozambique: New Inter-ministerial Commission to manage Territorial Planning

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Mozambique: New Inter-ministerial Commission to manage Territorial Planning

3:37 CAT | 27 Sep 2024

FILE - CIOT ill be chaired by the Prime Minister. [File photo: Lusa]

The Prime Minister of Mozambique will chair the newly approved Inter-ministerial Commission for Territorial Planning (CIOT), a government mechanism for institutional coordination.

The constitution of the CIOT was approved by the Council of Ministers and promulgated in a presidential decree on 19 September, to which Lusa had access on Thursday. The document describes it as a “consultative and coordination body, between different ministries”, to “promote the organisation and monitoring of processes and decisions relating to territorial development and its transformation”.

The CIOT’s responsibilities, as defined in the same decree, are to “monitor and analyse reports on the assessment of the state of Land Use Planning”, and also to “preliminarily assess major land use development projects, namely railway lines, development corridors, energy transport lines and others”, as well as “propose the approval of major urban development projects, considering their environmental and socio-economic impacts”.

It will also be responsible for “assessing the terms of reference for the preparation and/or updating of the National Territorial Development Plan (PNDT) and the Special Territorial Planning Plans”, as well as “promoting actions to attract financial resources for research in the areas of territorial development” and “coordinating actions between ministries to ensure synergies in public policies aimed at territorial planning”.

Promoting the “dissemination of alternative forms of physical planning that contribute to the orderly and functional occupation” of villages and communities and “formulating recommendations to the activity sectors, on the management of the territory and its natural resources”, are also responsibilities of the commission, which will report directly to the Council of Ministers.

The presidential decree approving the establishment of the CIOT states that it is chaired by the prime minister and includes government officials responsible for the areas of Spatial Planning, Territorial Organisation, Agriculture, Public Works and Water Resources, Mineral Resources and Energy, and Tourism, as well as a representative of the National Association of Municipalities of Mozambique (ANAMM).

Technical support for the new commission will be provided by a technical committee, composed of representatives of the areas that make up the CIOT, appointed by their respective heads and by the secretary-general of ANAMM.

The technical committee is headed by a national director from the area of Spatial Planning and meets quarterly or whenever convened by the national director “and reports to the head of the area of Spatial Planning”.

Source: Lusa