The bishop of Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado, says it would be “a great injustice” for the province not to take advantage of its vast natural resources, defending the “ethical and fair” management of the Mozambique Sovereign Wealth Fund (FSM).
“The resources are in Mozambique, but it would be a great injustice if those close to these resources did not also benefit,” Antonio Juliás said on Tuesday.
The Bishop of Pemba spoke to the media after taking office as a member of the FSM Supervisory Committee, representing the Episcopal Conference of Mozambique (CEM), the organization of Catholic bishops in the country.
Despite defending the fact that areas with natural resources use them for their own purposes, António Juliás noted that this priority should not be a subject of conflict in the country, since economic assets belong to all Mozambicans.
Bishop Pemba advocated the need for ethical, fair and moral management of the proceeds that will be held by the FSM.
“People expect the management of the sovereign wealth fund to serve all the people of Mozambique, so it is necessary to ensure ethics, integrity and morality,” said Antonio Julias.
The bishop praised the fact that the nine members of the FSM Oversight Committee were chosen from a variety of backgrounds, including churches, academia, professional orders, civil society and employers’ organizations.
“Our mission is to act in the interests of the people of Mozambique, especially the poorest,” he stressed.
The President of the Assembly of the Republic, Esperanza Bias, who took office as a member of the FSM Supervisory Committee, defended the importance of transparent management of revenues from natural resources for the benefit of the social and economic development of the country.
“The Mozambique sovereign wealth fund is an instrument for the sustainable management of non-renewable resources, which, among other things, must accumulate savings for the benefit of current and future generations,” Bias emphasized.
In the first half of the year, the Mozambican state received $114 million (€103.3 million) in revenues from oil and natural gas exploration, which were credited to the new FSM.
According to the economic and social balance of the execution of the state budget for January-June, provided by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, to which Lusa had access on Tuesday, these revenues include $74.1 million (€67.2 million) from 2022 and 2023, as well as $39.8 million (€36 million) from the first semester.
Mozambique’s parliament on December 15 approved the creation of the FSM, with revenues from natural gas exploration expected to reach $6 billion (€5,500 million) per year in the 2040s.
Mozambique has approved three projects to explore natural gas reserves in the Rovuma Basin, considered one of the largest in the world, off the coast of Cabo Delgado.
Two of the projects are larger and plan to pipe gas from the seabed to land, cool it in a plant and export it by sea as a liquid.
One of them is led by TotalEnergies (the Zone 1 consortium), and work continued until it was suspended indefinitely following the armed attack on Palma in March 2021, when the French energy company said it would only resume work when the area was safe.
The other is an investment yet to be announced, led by ExxonMobil and Eni (the Area 4 consortium).
The third completed smaller project also belongs to the Zone 4 consortium and is a floating platform for collecting and processing gas for export directly to the sea, the implementation of which began in November 2022.
Cabo Delgado province, which has the country’s largest natural gas reserves, has been the scene of terrorist attacks since 2017, for which movements linked to the Islamic State have claimed responsibility.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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