Mozambique | State’s real estate: More than 80% is not regularised – Carta

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Mozambique | State’s real estate: More than 80% is not regularised – Carta

4:50 CAT | 24 Nov 2022

Figures in the Administrative Tribunal’s Report and Opinion on the 2021 State General Account, approved a few days ago by the Assembly of the Republic, reveal that more than 80% of the state’s real estate assets are not regularised.

According to the Administrative Tribunal, by December 2021, the Mozambican state had 30,255 real estate properties, of which 5,674 (18.8%) had been regularised, with 24,386 properties still to be regularised, corresponding to 81.2% of the assets already identified.

The Administrative Tribunal reveals that in 2021, for example, there was no update of the state’s real estate assets, as the government declared the same data that it had declared in the 2020 General State Account: 641 identified properties and 195 registered.

The public accounts auditor does not advance the reasons for the poor registration of state properties, but, in 2020, the government stated that it was “in the process of increasing the number of valued properties and, as a result, carrying out their inventory, as well as regularisation of the legal situation in favour of the state”.

In addition to the weak and slow regularisation of property assets, the Administrative Tribunal also denounces irregularities in the inventorying of state assets. Among them is the weak intervention of the Internal Audit Subsystem, both with regard to the bodies implanted in the organic bodies of the audited entities, and those that act at the level of public administration in the accounts processes of state assets.

It also reports on the lack of inventory of property and assets, the regularisation of property deeds and of insurance policies of state vehicles and properties, and the mapping of assets that are idle, obsolete or in an advanced state of degradation, with a view to documenting their respective scrapping processes.

Also included in the list of irregularities is the allocation of state property to employees, [state officials or agents and civil servants] for long periods of time, complying neither with legally established criteria, nor defining the terms of their occupation.

“Like the 2020 CGE [General State Account], in this account, the amounts referring to the Final Gross Assets, of an organic scope, in the categories of Movable Assets and Vehicles, are incorrectly accounted for in the Consolidated Maps of the Inventory of the Patrimony of the State, due to errors in the application of the formula inserted in the e-Inventário platform,” the AT asserts, concluding that the information shared by the government does not reflect the reality of the state’s assets and properties.

“Due to the aforementioned situations, the 2021 CGE does not reliably reflect the information on the State Assets Inventory, to the detriment of the principles of clarity, accuracy and simplicity, established in article 49 of the SISTAFE Law. On the other hand, the facts mentioned above indicate the practice of financial infractions, under the terms of subparagraph j) of paragraph 3 of article 98 of that Law and the process of the Public Accounts Section, amended and republished by Law No. 8/2015, of 6 October,” the Administrative Tribunal warns.

Source: Carta de Moçambique