Mozambique has made significant progress in eliminating off-budget accounts and subjecting them to proper control and auditing, the US State Department reveals in its annual Fiscal Transparency Report 2024..

According to the study, which points to a variation in fiscal transparency in Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP), the Mozambican government published budget documents that gave an account of state spending and income, although they did not include allocations and income from state-owned companies.

"The Mozambican budget documents were not prepared in accordance with internationally accepted principles and did not itemize support expenditure for executive offices," says the report quoted by Voz de América (VOA).

Further on, the US State Department said that "information on debt obligations, including debts of large state-owned enterprises, was publicly available".

For the rest of the PALOP countries, São Tomé is among the countries that received the most criticism in the report, which also accuses the São Toméan government of not publishing its budget proposal online "at least one month before the start of the fiscal year" and of "not publishing a revised or supplementary budget".

With regard to Guinea Bissau, the report recognizes that the country has made significant progress in ensuring that the audit institution respected international standards of independence and has also made progress in submitting off-budget accounts to proper audits and publishing the debts of public companies within a reasonable period.

"However, this audit did not make all the budget documents public within a reasonable time," says the report.

For Angola, the US State Department pointed out that the country had made significant progress in publishing income and spending in budget documents made public, although it had not included detailed allocations, income and debt information for public companies.

(Photo DR)