The decree in question delegates to the Minister of Economy and Finance, Max Tonela, "the competence to define, by order, the amount to be transferred, as an extraordinary measure, to the local authorities affected by the floods in the current fiscal year".

The delegation of powers "aims to make extraordinary transfers to the local authorities that have registered destruction of infrastructure as a result of the bad weather recorded" this year, in order to "prevent the worsening of the conditions for providing services to the municipalities", according to the final communiqué of the 12th ordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers, held today in Maputo.

"It will be up to the Minister of Finance, within his powers and attributions in the sector, to verify how his 'purse' is, naturally, and, based on that, define what is reasonable according to the type of destruction that occurred at each point", detailed the spokesman for the Council of Ministers meeting, Inocêncio Impissa, at the end of the meeting.

And that, in order to define the amounts to be transferred to each affected municipality, "not only the survey" of the damages, "which has been under development", should be carried out, but also "to understand what that means and according to the existing budget availability".

"The most important thing is that (...) the municipalities' inability to carry out or face the difficulties encountered due to bad weather was perceived, and on that basis, the Government was able to give its support within the scope of the principle of subsidiarity that was established by the Constitution of the Republic", Impissa also pointed out.

The spokesman for the Council of Ministers meeting did not say which municipalities will be supported, recalling only that in the southern part of the country the consequences of the rains, strong winds and floods in the cities of Maputo and Matola are known.

"We all know the reality, they are the closest. But they are not the only ones. Here in the southern zone they had the greatest difficulty, but we also know that we had Vilanculos with extreme situations too, and others in the northern zone that had a lot of rain. There are several districts and municipalities that have had problems", he also said.

"What will be done now is to catalogue, see which ones are included in the package, which actually need extraordinary support, if their budget does not effectively correspond to the capacity to deal with these situations", concluded Inocêncio Impissa.

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