Maputo, Mozambique, 8 March – Mozambique’s government plans to forcibly retrieve debts to the Treasury owed by companied that so far have shown no interest in meeting their obligations, the Finance Minister said in Maputo Monday.

At the end of an audience with the parliamentary commission for the Budget and Planning in order to provide explanations about State General Accounts for 2009, Manuel Chang said the government had approved incentive measures for companies with debts to the Treasury to pay them off.

“Some companies, around seven or eight, have taken advantage of the incentives and have paid their debts in full, there have been others that have asked for payment deadlines to be extended, which was authorised, and there were others that neither paid what they owe nor sought to contact the authorities renegotiate the payment of their debts,” the minister said.

The Finance Minister noted that in relation to the companies that had yet to state their intention to honour their debts, the government would use all the resources it had available to forcibly extract payment, namely by going through the courts.

The Report on the General State Accounts for 2009, drawn up by the administrative Court, said that between 2003 and 2009, the 34 companies that benefitted from State loans, using Treasury funds, had repaid just 9 percent of that debt.

On 31 December 2002 there was a debt owed to the State of 776.4 million meticals and, by 31 December 2009 just 69.2 million of that debt had been paid back, with 697.2 million remaining to be paid. (macauhub)