Mozambique: Parliamentarians – Mega-Projects Should Serve to Develop the Country

Maputo — The chairperson of the Planning and Budget Commission (CPO) of the Mozambican Parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, António Niquice, argued on Monday that the revenue from mega-projects must serve to fight regional inequalities and promote peace and national unity.

He was speaking at the opening of a meeting of the High Level Working Group of Parliamentary Budget Committees of the Portuguese-speaking African Countries and East Timor (PALOP-TL), a three-day event that began on Monday in Maputo.

“Our natural resource potential is immense, which fuels enormous expectations among the Mozambican people. Our hope is that the revenues from natural gas will contribute to leverage the economy and promote the well-being of all Mozambicans”, said Niquice.

According to an Assembly press release, Niquice stated that “this vision is optimistic; however. We must also be cautious and prudent in our analysis of this issue. The revenues from large projects should not be seen as a magic wand for solving all the structural and institutional problems of our countries.”

According to Niquice, everyone has to look at Mozambican reality, see the priorities of the governance programs and, based on international best practices, see where the proposed sovereign wealth fund can help to make a qualitative and quantitative leap in the desired growth and development.

“It is our hope that the management formula of the sovereign wealth fund will help promote programmes for the industrialization of agriculture, human capital formation, and the creation of more jobs, especially for young people, as well as raise household incomes, contributing to the fight against poverty”, he said.

Currently, the parliaments of PALOP-TL are challenged to promote, increasingly, an effective supervisory function, assertive and with greater citizen participation.

“In our parliament, the participation of civil society in the debate in the CPO is done by its representatives, in this case, the Budget Monitoring Forum, the Center for Public Integrity and the Institute for Multiparty Democracy (three of Mozambique’s most prominent NGOs), in addition to the fact that the plenary sessions of the Assembly are also open to the public”, he explained.

“It is important that the process of defining and reviewing policies is transparent and inclusive in order to encompass all sensitivities and ensure that the instruments taken into account benefit the present and future generations”, Niquice argued.

He stressed that “in this sense, the Mozambican Parliament, as a key player in the management of natural resources and in the exercise of its legislative and oversight functions, must ensure the greatest respect for national interests.”

For his part, the Political Advisor of the Delegation of the European Union in Mozambique, Stefan Simosas, said there is now “a consensus that public finances are at the center of countries’ efforts to achieve the objectives of public growth, poverty eradication, gender equality and sustainable development.”

According to Simosas, “countries and their administrations have made a social contract with their citizens. Societies flourish when people feel that they are benefiting from their countries’ resources”.

He added that “to this end, we would like to affirm the importance of control mechanisms and encourage transparency and equal participation in the budget process and the promotion of gender-extensive budgeting and its tracking.”

Public and transparent controls “are also very important”, Simosas said “This is true and necessary when we talk about natural resource revenues. The fact that natural resources are not renewable reinforces the need for a rigorous and prudent choice between the various forms of management of the sovereign wealth fund”.

The international experience, according to Simosas, shows that most countries that are rich in non-renewable natural resources, and that do not have well-defined terms within their framework, have low levels of economic growth and are more prone to social tensions.

“In this context, sovereign wealth funds financed by revenues originating from the extraction of natural resources such as gas, oil and other minerals, are a type of fund that can bring great benefit to a country, as these funds can minimize expenditure and help the public fund address macroeconomic challenges”, he pointed out.

Source:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *