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Government Studying Rise in Funds to Resource Extraction for Area Residents

Government Studying Rise in Funds to Resource Extraction for Area Residents

The Mozambican ministry of mineral resources and energy said on Friday that it was assessing an increase in the funds that the state transfers to the communities where natural resources are extracted, with a view to providing greater benefits for them.

“Discussions are currently underway about the review of the rate at various levels, I believe that at some point there may be an increase or there may be a check,” said Obete Matine, spokesperson for the seventh coordinating council of the ministry of mineral resources and energy.

Mozambican civil society organisations have contested the 2.75 percent tax that the state channels to communities obtained from the tax on production of the concessionaires in the areas of natural resource exploration.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the seventh coordinating council of the ministry for mineral resources and energy, the spokesperson for the meeting said that the authorities were studying the possibility of reviewing the amounts transferred to communities and the possibility of defining criteria for the amounts to be allocated to each region.

“What happens at the moment is that there is no regulation that fixes the rate of 2.75 percent and at the moment this rate is fixed in the state budget,” Obete Matine said.

Matine explained that the resources to be transferred to the communities should contribute to a balanced social and economic development, aiming to prevent the deepening of imbalances between the country’s regions.

“This issue cannot be seen in a very straightforward way, because the ultimate aim is to benefit communities, not to harm others,” he stressed.

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Obete Matine, who is also inspector general of the ministry of resources and energy, downplayed the importance of a single tax, noting that natural resources have a differentiated economic weight, which may justify different transfers of amounts to communities.

The allegedly low benefit for communities living in areas of natural resource exploration has been pointed out as one of the causes of social tensions in these areas, referring to armed violence in Cabo Delgado province as a flagrant example of these tensions.

Lusa

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