ASSEMBLY PASSES INCREASED BUDGET

The Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Tuesday passed a budget for itself for 2011 of 556.4 million meticais (about 15.9 million US dollars), of which 56 per cent will go on the wages and allowances paid to the 250 deputies.Despite the government’s call for austerity, this figure is ten per cent larger than the Assembly budget for this year, and the total amount paid to the deputies has risen by 14 per cent.The deputies’ salaries amount to 162.7 million meticais – but that sum is almost doubled by the various allowances paid to the deputies. There is an attendance allowance, a constituency alliance, an entertainment allowance, allowances for fuel, water, electricity and rent. This brings the total amount paid to the deputies to 309.1 million meticais – which works out to a total average remuneration of 103,000 meticais per deputy per month.Deputies who sit on commissions earn considerably more, and those who have no such responsibilities earn less. The Assembly budget is nowhere near as detailed as it was in the 1990s, where payments for commission chairmen, rapporteurs and members were laid out in detail. With the figures made available on Tuesday it is only possible to give an average.One of the changes is an increase in the rent allowance to 12,000 meticais a month. Deputies defend this on the grounds that rents in Maputo are expensive, and the housing market is completely unregulated. They point out that deputies from the provinces who rent housing in Maputo to attend parliamentary business are already paying more than 12,000 meticais a month in rent.The increase in the rent allowance was announced publicly on Saturday by Mateus Katupha, spokesperson for the Assembly’s governing board, the Standing Commission. The deputies will also be paid a new year bonus equivalent to an extra month’s basic wage, whenever the government decrees this bonus (known as “the 13th month”) for state employees. In recent years, it has always been decreed. Deputies’ salaries will also rise in line with any wage increase for state employees in 2011.Currently, the statutory monthly minimum wage in Mozambique varies between 1,593 meticais for sugar workers to 3,483 meticais for workers in financial activities. As for other items in the budget, wages and allowances for the Assembly’s staff amount to 89.6 million meticais, while goods and services over the year will cost 132.5 million meticais. Transfers (payments to international bodies, scholarships, medical expenses, and what are referred to as “other events”) are budgeted at 19.5 million meticais.The capital budget is 15.7 million meticais, which is only a 2.6 per cent increase on this year’s figure. Most of the capital budget is to be spent on rehabilitating and maintaining the Assembly buildings, but 2.5 million meticais is set aside for studies on building a parliamentary complex, which could provide deputies with accommodation and thus solve the rent problem. In the vote on the budget, deputies from the majority Frelimo Party and from the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) voted in favour, but the 49 deputies from the former rebel movement Renamo abstained.They gave two radically different reasons for doing so. Jose Samo Gudo protested that there was no correspondence between the budget and the Assembly programme it was supposed to finance. The programme contains goals such as “raising the capacity of deputies for legislative production” and “stepping up the contact between the deputies and their electorate”, but does not specify how much money should be spent on each goal. This lack of detail irritated Samo Gudo. “It’s a matter of principle that what we demand from others, we should demand from ourselves”, he said.But Anselmo Vitor had quite a different objection. He thought the budget was too small. “This budget will not satisfy the needs of the parliamentary commissions, or of constituency work”, he claimed.