Maputo, 16 Out (AIM) – The deputy minister of Economy and Finance, Amílcar Tivane, has announced that the Mozambican State Budget (SB) for next year does not envisage wage increases for the public administration, despite forecast economic growth of 5.5 per cent.
“We have created provisions in the State Budget for the government to manage wage policy, but we want to ensure the stabilization of the wage bill”, said Tivane, cited by the Portuguese News Agency Lusa, on the sidelines of the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which took place recently in Morocco.
According to the deputy minister, the decision on an increase can be made, but it must not divert the trajectory of the wage bill, which Mozambique wants to maintain at its current level.
The macroeconomic scenario points to an increase in the Gross Domestic Product of 5.5 percent, 0.5 percentage points more than the IMF forecast.
“The 5.5 per cent target is in line with the progress we’ve seen in the extractive sector, particularly in liquefied natural gas, but it’s not driven just by the dynamics of the gas sector. There are also sectors like agriculture and manufacturing industry”, said Tivane.
He acknowledged that, despite economic growth, debt remains one of the country’s major problems.
According to the deputy minister, the government devotes ‘just over 40 percent of tax revenue to servicing the debt, which is absorbing an increasing proportion of the fiscal space that should be channeled towards investments in the country’s development”.
“The budget is structured to pursue the government’s economic and social policy objectives, fundamentally the creation of conditions to increase fiscal space to support investments that can accelerate the pace of recovery of the Mozambican economy, which has been plagued by multiple shocks in recent years”, said Tivane.
(AIM)
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