Mozambique's General Inspectorate of Public Administration (IGAP) announced yesterday, Friday, the elaboration of a national strategy for the prevention and fight against corruption.

"What we are doing right now is the national strategy. Our focus is to combat, in a hard manner, all deviant behavior, everything that has to do with the tendencies of the public servant to prevaricate," declared the director-general of IGAP, Augusto Mangove, during the opening of the meeting of the institution's Coordinating Council yesterday in Maputo.

The document, which should be completed and released by December, will be based on the Public Administration Reform and Development Strategy (ERDAP), approved by the Mozambican government in 2012.

"In general, we can say that the fight against corruption in Mozambique is having the desired effects [...] There is a work of internal control, there is a screening that is being done in public institutions," said the official quoted by Lusa.

The most recent data on the impact of corruption in Mozambique released by the Attorney General's Office indicated that the crime of embezzlement damaged the Mozambican state by more than 7.9 million euros in 2020.

The amount corresponding to the embezzlement of state funds in 2020 - typified as embezzlement - represents an increase when compared with the previous year, when the amount resulting from the illicit appropriation of public resources was just over 7.7 million euros.