Mozambique has lowered the proportion of gas tax revenues it will allocate to the sovereign wealth fund it is preparing, down from 50% to 40% in the first fifteen years, reports Lusa citing the Bloomberg financial information agency.

Draft legislation that has not yet been approved indicates that 40% of the tax revenues from gas exploration will be channeled, in the first fifteen years of exploration, into the sovereign wealth fund that the country is preparing to manage the nearly $100 billion it is expected to receive in tax revenues.

Then the percentage rises to 50%, according to the draft bill that is expected to be submitted to MPs by the end of this year, which is a variation from the 2020 idea, where the fund would receive 50% in the first two decades, a figure that would then rise to 80% from taxes from this sector.

Mozambique should certainly be one of the world's largest exporters of gas by 2024, benefiting from the energy transition underway globally, which seeks to move away from fossil fuels, namely oil.

According to Lusa news agency, the establishment of a sovereign fund for the management of revenues was one of the demands of the International Monetary Fund for the return to the country, already this year, following a five-year suspension of budget support after the so-called 'hidden debt scandal'.

This sovereign fund, which should follow the model implemented by several other African oil and gas producing countries such as Angola or Nigeria, will have an independent board of experts, established by the Ministry of Finance, and operations will be managed by the central bank, supervised by members of parliament and an independent committee that will include members of civil society.

In the preliminary version reported by Lusa, also citing Bloomberg, the fund is barred from investing in oil and gas projects, and the Ministry of Finance is expected to appoint auditors to review the fund's accounts.