Data from the Balance of the Economic and Social Plan and State Budget for the first quarter of 2024 shows that the defence sector spent approximately 30% of its annual budget in the first three months of the year, Carta de Moçambique news portal reported on Friday, May 10.
According to the document, quoted by the website, in the first quarter of this year, the Mozambican Armed Defence Forces (FADM) spent 6.4 billion meticals, equivalent to 29.6% of the annual budget, set at 21.68 billion meticals.
This is the highest level of budget execution in the first quarter, followed by the education sector which, in the first three months of the year, spent the equivalent of 25.5 per cent of the annual budget, and the security and public order sector (referring to the police and secret services), which spent 22.4 per cent of its budget.
Carta de Moçambique explains that this is a situation that has tended to be normal for the FADM in recent years. In 2023, for example, the military spent, in the first quarter, a budget equivalent to 47.2 per cent (almost half) of that prepared for the whole year, while in 2020, they consumed 95.5 per cent of the annual budget in six months.
‘If this rate of spending continues into 2024, the FADM could face a budget deficit of 18.4 per cent, a fact that once again raises questions about how the budget for that sector has been projected,’ the website explains.
It should be noted that ‘uncontrolled’ spending in the defence sector has been going on since 2018, a year after the start of the terrorist attacks in Cabo Delgado province. Accounts made by the body, based on the General State Account reports and the Balance of the Economic and Social Plan and State Budget 2023 report, indicate that spending on the Defence and Security Forces grew by 50.82 billion meticals between 2017 and 2023.
