Mozambique’s main anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), has condemned the government for taking debt restructuring proposals to the country’s creditors before discussing them inside Mozambique first.

Last week, the Minister of Economy and Finance, Adriano Maleiane, led a delegation to London to meet with creditors on how to restructure the debt arising from the illegal loans of over two billion US dollars obtained by three security related companies – Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company), Proindicus and MAM (Mozambique Assets Management) – from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia.

A statement from CIP declared “it remains patently clear that the Government has no interest in sharing with the Mozambican people the substance of the proposal before submitting it to the creditors”.

“This restructuring proposal”, it added, “sacrifices the well-being of Mozambicans now and in the future, without at any time there having been any consultation with Parliament or any other institution that represents tax-paying citizens, with the Government knowing very well that the proposal presented has an impact on the country’s economy and on future generations”.

“It is a proposal specially prepared for creditors, ignoring the rest of Mozambican Society”, the statement accuses,“ and CIP considers that this demonstrates that the Government’s promise of more transparency in these issues is empty talk”.

Back in April 2016, the Ematum bonds were transformed into Mozambican government bonds, and thus became officially part of the public debt. CIP believed that the proposals to the creditors “show categorically that the Government has already assumed the debts of Pro-Indicus and MAM as public debts, contrary to the pronouncements that it would be the companies, which contracted these debts, who take responsibility for them”.

On this CIP is certainly correct. Interviewed in Monday’s issue of the independent daily ‘O País’, Maleiane clearly accepted that all the debts must be paid, sooner or later. He said it was important to tell the creditors “that we would like to comply with our undertakings, because the State must be credible”.

Since Maleiane appeared to have dropped the earlier government position that the companies are responsible for the debts, CIP argued it now became incumbent on the government to explain to the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, why it had changed its mind. It was also its duty “to provide crucial details of any proposed debt restructuring to the Mozambican people”.

Furthermore CIP feared that the government’s strategy for dealing with the illicit debts was to use future revenues from the enormous natural gas fields in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of the northern province of Cabo Delgado.

CIP accused the government of “mortgaging the economic future of Mozambique”, instead of “identifying the mismanagement of the public resources by a group of individuals that led the country to bankruptcy”.

The statement asked why no progress has been made in bringing those responsible for the illegal loans to justice.

“Why is it preferable to protect a handful of people at the expense of the welfare of an entire nation?”, CIP asked. “With this attitude, the Government continues to protect a group of individuals and authors of this indebtedness, fostering the non-accountability of the owners of the debts, at the expense of present and future sacrifices of all Mozambicans”.