PM claims that “correcting” the state wages bill does not mean cutting wages

Maputo, 6 Mar (AIM) – Mozambican Prime Minister Adriano Maleiane has claimed that “correcting” the wages bill for the public administration does not mean that there will be wage cuts, since “the 2024 budget has already been approved.”

According to Maleiane, cited in Wednesday’s issue of the independent daily “O País”, under the implementation of the Single Wage Scale (TSU) in the civil service in 2023, there was an unexpected expenditure of over 28 billion meticais (438.5 million dollars at the current exchange rate). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) claims that it is helping the government to correct what went wrong.

“There will be no wage cuts and the idea that the IMF has imposed such a measure on the government is a misinterpretation”, Maleiane said.

According to the government plan, with the TSU it was expected to spend 19.2 billion Meticais on public administration wages in 2023. However, the real public sector wages bill was about 28.5 billion meticais.

The IMF’s finding was that the excess of around nine billion meticais was due to an “incorrect mapping of state administration staff.”

“In addition to corrective measures of around one per cent of GDP (made up of revenue and wage bill reduction measures), we approved a medium-term action plan to help reduce the wage bill to 10 per cent of GDP in the medium term”, reads the government’s statement sent to the IMF.

“The reduction in the wage bill to which the government refers does not include cuts in wages”, the Prime Minister explained.

According to Maleiane, the IMF does not have any role in determining wage cuts.

“The fund only comes to accompany and help the government’s programme”, he claimed. “The budget, and those wages that are to be paid, have been approved”.

The Prime Minister made it clear that the 2024 budget already included the supposedly necessary adjustments to the wages bill.

In reality, the introduction of the TSU was chaotic, and became vastly more expensive than initially imagined, when several sectors of public administration staff (notably in the health and education services) claimed they had not been properly incorporated into the TSU. So the government repeatedly adjusted the TSU – hence the extra nine billion meticais paid out in wages in 2023.

Maleiane is now attempting to claim that the overall wages bill can be reduced without cutting the wages of any individual public servants.

(AIM)

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