Mozambique’s score in the 2019 Transparency International Corruption Index has risen from 23 to 26 points out of 100.This is still well below the high of 31 in 2012, 2013 and 2014.There is a direct impact on exporters and importers. In July 2020 the chairperson of the Mozambican Tax Authority (AT), Amelia Muendane, told a staff retreat that it was time for tax officers to stop believing that the customs posts at the borders, or the domestic tax collection posts “are our fields where we can freely harvest crops and eat them with impunity”. She said that in the 2015-2019 period 231 tax and customs agents had been prosecuted for involvement in contraband, theft, and coercing taxpayers, among other offences. But she was sure that the figure was far from reflecting the true scale of corruption within the AT. The CPI scores 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, according to experts and business people. At 26 points, Mozambique shares 146th place out of 180 on the global index with a number of countries, including Angola, Bangladesh, Guatemala, Honduras, Iran and Nigeria. Regionally, it is ahead of Zimbabwe (24 points and 158th) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (18 points and 168th).South Africa is ranked 70th on the corruption perception index, with a score of 44. According to Transparency International, 75% of countries have a score of less than 50. The average is 43/100.Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the lowest score of 32/100. The perception is that the least corrupt officials are in New Zealand and Denmark, and the most corrupt in Somalia.Corruption has become a focus of Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi who earlier this year called for a more vigorous fight against corruption from his new government. Speaking in Maputo after swearing into office Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario and 16 other ministers, Nyusi described corruption as "a silent disease that is continuing to weaken the Mozambican state. It is one of the main obstacles to the development of our country". He urged the ministers to accept "the highest principles of ethics, such as transparency, integrity, the primacy of the law, loyalty, humility, impartiality, equity and social justice". “They should use resources rationally and be intolerant of corruption," he added. In August he declared that the fight against corruption in Mozambique was an irreversible process, and that the Mozambican state would never surrender to corruption. It is evident in all sectors: corruption exists in civil society, in religion, and in the political parties. It exists in the public sector, in the private sector and in the mass media,” he said.
INSERT: “Corruption is a silent disease that is continuing to weaken the Mozambican state. It is one of the main obstacles to the development of our country.” – President Filipe Nyusi
