The Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) said on Sunday (11) that the government is having difficulties paying the salaries of state employees until the end of this year, and warned that this could extend beyond the current mandate. The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) denies the allegations and explains the delays in salary payments based on the Single Salary Table (TSU).

The NGO believes that the TSU is "one of the biggest fiascos" of the current government, in that salaries used to be paid on the 18th of each month, but "now state employees and agents don't even know when and how much they will receive".

Quoting the Bank of Mozambique, he says that the current situation is one of high pressure on public spending and low revenue collection.

"The public accounts are under pressure, and with the TSU acting as a major 'devourer' of money, the government has sacrificed public investment while resorting to domestic borrowing to deal with the growing budget deficit," writes the CDD.

The organization explains that the pressure on the government is due to the need to reduce the civil service wage bill to 10.8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), following the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund. In fact, the head of the MEF, Max Tonela, said at a press conference that the idea is to reduce the wage bill as a percentage of GDP from 14% to 8%. Last year, with the TSU, the government spent 186 billion meticais, around 16.5% of GDP, on wages and salaries, compared to 12.5% in 2021.

"For the current fiscal year, the government plans to spend more than 176 billion meticais on salaries and wages for state agents and employees, corresponding to more than 37% of total state spending. Between January and March, the government spent another 47 billion of the 176 billion meticais, an execution level of 26.7%. At the moment, the Executive is forced to make surgical cuts in order to ensure that salaries are paid by the end of the year with the meager resources available," reads the CDD document consulted by MZNews.

The MEF reacted this Monday (12) to the NGO's document, and explained to the Radio Mozambique that the delays in the payment of salaries are due, precisely, to the auditing process to file the TSU irregularities.

"The Mozambican state has been paying salaries every month according to schedule. What we have seen is that with these changes that have been made to Law 5/2022 of February 14, on the TSU, there are some delays on the part of the sectors in complying with the payroll and, therefore, this means that the payment of salaries normally takes place until the last day on the calendar, which was not usual, which is the 30th. But in one way or another it always happens, and every month, until now that we're in June, we've been paying salaries in the normal way," explained MEF spokesman Alfredo Mutombene.

The spokesman also said that the money for the payment of salaries to state employees comes from current revenue, since it is a current expense.

"Naturally, it's this year's revenue, so it's collected in this financial year and it's on that basis that we meet the wage bill. Therefore, if there is a need for funding, the state uses treasury bills and later [this funding] is covered when the revenue collection for that month, quarter or semester is complete," he revealed.

With the TSU, the state payroll rose from 11 billion meticais to 18 billion meticais, a figure considered to be above average. The state is working to set the wage bill at 14 billion meticais.

Parliament recently approved cuts in the salaries of senior state leaders, including members of parliament. This should reduce spending by around 1.4 billion meticais a year. The Center for Public Integrity (CIP) believes that the cuts should be in the order of 12.3 billion meticais a year. For this NGO, the government should also eliminate functions and institutions that make the wage bill high.