The new Minister of Finance, Carla Alexandra Louveira, said there was a need to ‘restructure’ the public debt, warning that the country had lost revenue of more than 658 million dollars after the post-election demonstrations.
‘One of the challenges we have is managing the public debt. The work we have to do is to think about restructuring our debt so that, within that budgetary space, we can ensure the payment of the debt, but also respond to the current needs of the State Budget,’ said the minister, after the swearing in of the new government on Saturday (18) in Maputo.
‘The indicators for the end of last year that were presented to us show that in December alone there was a loss of around 14 billion meticals (217.1 million dollars) in revenue as a result of the demonstrations. The full year 2025 is expecting a loss of revenue of around 42 billion meticals (651.5 million dollars). So this loss of space ended up jeopardising last year’s financial year,’ described the new finance minister.

Carla Louveira
Carla Louveira defended the need to increase economic growth in 2025. The forecast for 2024 was 5 per cent, but this should be revised downwards due to the post-election tensions and paralyses.
‘We want all the economic recovery to take place in this financial year, so that there is capacity, availability, recovery, economic stability in the sense that economic activity takes place and also the returns from the private sector’s fundraising can benefit what is the State Budget. That way, we can ensure what are the priority sectors,’ he recognised.
The inauguration of the new government, whose prime minister, also sworn in today (along with 12 other ministers), is former judge and Justice Minister Maria Benvinda Levi, comes after almost three months of violent demonstrations challenging the process surrounding the general elections on 9 October.
These protests, called by former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane – who does not recognise the results, alleging ‘electoral fraud’ – led to more than 300 deaths and more than 600 people being shot, and degenerated into violence and clashes with the police, looting, pillaging and the destruction of public and private infrastructure.