Public enterprises in Mozambique cost State Budget US$430 million per year

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Public enterprises in Mozambique cost State Budget US$430 million per year

3:26 CAT | 26 Jul 2019

A view of Maputo. [File photo: Macauhub]

The Minister of Industry and Commerce, Ragendra de Sousa, revealed that public enterprises cost the State Budget “US$430 million a year in subsidies, guarantees, etc.”. This is as much as was allocated to the entire health sector in 2019.

Speaking in Maputo on Monday (July 22) during a seminar on the challenges facing the Mozambican industrial sector and measures for its leverage, Minister Ragendra de Sousa revealed that state-owned and state-participated enterprises cost the state US$430 million a year in grants, guarantees, etc., for several years.

The cost, therefore, of the state business sector, was as much as the government has allocated in the 2019 State Budget to be spent on the health of Mozambicans.

The minister made this revelation in the course of announcing that “next year, we will do everything for other public enterprises to also raise capital for private sector participation, in our quest for budgetary efficiency”.

@Verdade has established that this announcement by the Minister of Industry and Commerce is mere rhetoric, given that one of the initial conditions for listing a company on the Mozambican Stock Exchange is that it is an Anonymous Society (‘AS’) limited responsibility company. However, it so happens that much of the so-called state business sector is far from that, and has taken few steps in that direction.

And although Minister Ragendra de Sousa pointed to the Cahora Bassa Hydroelectric Plant (HCB) as an example of the executive’s desire to list other companies on the Mozambican Stock Exchange, the HCB was in fact never a public or state-owned company.

By Adérito Caldeira

Source: A Verdade