The Prime Minister, Adriano Maleiane, revealed that the government still does not have the full amount of funds for the economic restructuring and reconstruction of districts largely destroyed by attacks by rebels linked to the Islamic State in Cabo Delgado province, one year after the initiative was launched.

This recognition comes as a study reveals that several districts still lack basic services, such as schools and hospitals, and the population lives off the collection and sale of scrap metal, vehicles, and armored cars.

The Reconstruction Plan for Cabo Delgado, which should last three years and was approved more than a year ago by the Council of Ministers, will cost 300 million US dollars and foresees, besides guaranteeing the security of the area, creating means of subsidence for displaced people who want to return to their areas of origin, re-establishing administrative and commercial activities in the districts severely affected by terrorism.

Adriano Maleiane, who visited the province in the last four days, acknowledged that the reinstallation of administrative services is following slow steps and that the economy continues to be boosted by local traders and at their own risk, in districts that have already started to receive thousands of displaced people back.

"The [reconstruction] program has underlying funding, what is happening is that the pace of making those funds available that was planned, is not being accompanied with the urgency on the ground," Adriano Maleiane told journalists in Pemba, stressing that minimum services are being re-established, although some are functioning precariously.

"The economic agents, all of them in Cabo Delgado, have the capacity to reinvent themselves, because all of them didn't wait for the money to become available, they did things and things are happening," stressed the leader quoted by VOA, insisting that "I saw works in progress, but I also saw the economy working.

The government, Maleiane continued, continues to prioritize the reconstruction of the district of Mocímboa da Praia, - the first district captured by the rebels and where they occupied for more than a year - because it has a strategic port and airport to boost the local economy and meet the logistics of the billion-dollar natural gas mega-projects.

But also to create conditions to support traders in the affected districts who have lost almost everything due to the attacks of the armed group, which has been terrorizing the resource-rich province of Cabo Delgado for five years.

"We have a program in the area of micro-financing, for the trade area, and the process of setting up the board is underway, unfortunately sometimes when the resources are not from the budget, they depend on partners and others, and don't always come at the pace we would like", Adriano Maleiane affirmed, assuring that the Executive is regrouping to mobilize resources for the reconstruction of Cabo Delgado.

Cabo Delgado province has the largest and richest liquefied natural gas project in Africa and since October 2017 has been plagued by attacks by an armed group calling itself al-Shaabab (Arabic for 'the youth' or 'the boys') that began a few years ago to gain sympathy from the Islamic State.

To face this insurgency, the government got support from Rwanda and countries of the Southern African Development Community that sent thousands of troops to help the Mozambican army.