By MOZTIMES
Maputo (MOZTIMES) – The Mozambican government admitted on Tuesday that there are irregularities in the fuel distribution chain and announced that the licences of some fuel distributors have been suspended.
During a press conference after a meeting of the Council of Ministers, the government spokesperson and Minister of State Administration, Inocencio Impissa, said that the authorities have discovered “weaknesses” in the fuel transport and marketing system, including operators who are working in an irregular manner.
“Many of the transport operators who are transporting our fellow citizens are doing so in an irregular fashion”, declared Impissa.
He did not believe that the current crisis is necessarily linked to a shortage of fuel at the oceanic fuel terminals. Indeed, the Minister said those port terminals contain fuel reserves that will last for two or three months, or even longer.
Impissa said the real problems are in the distribution chain, including cases of distributors using licences that have expired. One operator had been suspended because it obtained fuel in tanker trucks outside of the authorised channels.
The government, he added, suspects that some operators are deliberately undermining the mechanisms of state subsidies for transporters. “Behind this transport crisis, there is sabotage”, he claimed.
Impissa recognised that the government does not know how long it can go on subsidising fuel, in order to prevent an increase in public transport fares.
“There may come a day when the State decides ‘we have already invested a lot, but it seems this crisis is here to stay’. We will have to find other ways of acting”, he said.
Impissa insisted that the main purpose of the subsidies is to protect citizens from increases in the cost of living.
“When the government introduces fuel subsidies, it’s not because of the transport operators, it’s because of the citizens”, he stressed. (MT)
