DISAGREEMENT OVER GENERAL STATE ACCOUNTS

The parliamentary benches of the ruling Frelimo party and the opposition parties Renamo and the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) are divided over the report and the opinion of the Administrative Tribunal (TA) about the General State Accounts (CGE) in 2009.This disagreement arose today during the first day of debate on the accounts in the plenary session of the Assembly of the Republic, the country’s parliament.While Frelimo argued that the accounts should be approved because they are of higher quality compared with previous years, the two opposition parties held a negative opinion.Antonio Jose Amelia and Danilo Teixeira, from Frelimo, supported the resolution approving the Accounts, drawn up by the Assembly’s Plan and Budget Commission (CPO), which stressed that the increased use of e-SISTAFE (the computerised state financial management system) and other measures have improved the implementation of the State Budget.Frelimo also pointed to the fact that the government is welcoming the recommendations of the TA as well as supporting efforts and activities to implement these same recommendations.However, Renamo said that the State Budget for 2009 does not show clearly, accurately and simply the execution of the budget.The largest opposition party stated that the audits did not have uniform procedures for the forced collecting of Treasury debts.For Renamo, the audits found that the data in the CGE on the implementation of the budget of some State entities diverged from the data recorded in the accounts of the institutions themselves, a fact noted by the TA in its negative opinion of the CGE in 2008.According to the Renamo parliamentarian Jose Samo Gudo, the government has continued to favour the political elite in the allocation of Treasury loans. Nor, according to Samo Gudo, has the government done anything to charge those that have not honoured their repayments.The Renamo deputy claimed that between 2002 and 2009 the government disbursed a little over 766 million meticais to 34 beneficiaries, the majority of whom have not made any repayments.“We demand that nobody is above the law in this respect” said Samo Gudo.The TA report about the 2009 General State Accounts points to the occurrence of some anomalies in the execution of budget spending.The debate on the General State Accounts ends on Thursday, the same day as the government is going to present information about the State subsidy on a basket of basic goods which is to be implemented to minimise the effects of the high cost of living on low income families.