The Minister of Economy and Finance announced on Wednesday that the Mozambican Sovereign Fund (FSM), the creation of which is to be voted on in parliament this week, is expected to raise one billion dollars a year within ten years from revenues from natural gas exploration.

Max Tonela, questioned in parliament by members of the first Constitutional Affairs, Human Rights and Legality Committee and the second Planning and Budget Committee, explained that "on average, over the 25 years of the natural gas exploration concession contract, the Mozambican state will receive 750 million dollars".

The draft law creating the FSM, to be set up with 40% of revenues from the exploitation of natural gas, has already been approved by the Council of Ministers and will be discussed at the 42nd ordinary parliamentary session, which will take place in Maputo from August 3 to 7.

Meanwhile, in his explanations to MPs yesterday, the Minister for the Economy and Finance said that revenues were expected to be around 100 million dollars a year in the first three years and "incrementally", from the fifth year onwards, around 300 million dollars a year", reaching around 1 billion dollars a year after the first ten years.

Cited by Lusa, Max Tonela also revealed that this year, "since the start of exploration, the state has already received 40 million dollars" from natural gas exploration, and that the expectation is for 100 million dollars "by the end of the year".

At the same hearing, he assured that the WSF would be guaranteed "reporting" and "public" information on its performance and management.

"All Mozambicans will be able to have information about the market value, the tax and the income that will come from the investments that will be made by the fund," said Tonela.

The source also assured that in the interests of transparency, the State Budget will now have a "specific section detailing how the funds will be used".

In the model for the creation of the WSF, whose operational manager will be the Bank of Mozambique, Max Tonela says that "successful examples in the world and not so good cases" were taken into account, in which "countries that had great resources and were riding on the back of the resources and raised the standard of consumption of the state too much, got into too much debt and now the level of resources is reducing and they are entering a conflict in which they don't have the capacity to have more resources".

"So this is the ultimate purpose of the fund. That's why we have to look after current generations, but ensure that future generations can also benefit from the existence of resources that the country also has," he explained, stressing that the WSF will allow "us to get resources to finance the State Budget in a situation where there is no more natural gas" to exploit.

The draft law creating the WSF states that "in its governance structure, the Fund is intended to make full use of the country's existing institutions, guided by the principles of good governance, transparency, accountability, independence and inclusion, in line with international best practices".