The World Bank Group has approved about US$7.1 billion in development projects in Mozambique over the last decade.Investments were made in crucial sectors of the Mozambican economy, particularly energy production, infrastructure, agriculture, public finance, municipal development and resilience to climate change. The latter is of particular importance due to the greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.Among challenges over the last decade of intervention in the country, the World Bank highlights the adverse impact of climate change shocks, which have negatively impacted implementation of many of the other projects cited.The information was shared by financial analyst at the World Bank Mozambique, Elvis Langa, in a brief interview with AIM.“The total number of projects approved in the last 10 years represents US$7.1 billion. The projects take place in the areas of energy, roads, agriculture, education, among others,” Elvis Langa said on the sidelines of the presentation of the World Bank’s Mozambique Country Program Evaluation.Regarding the evaluation, which analyses the importance of assistance from the World Bank Group in Mozambique, the challenges underlined are linked to the weak coordination of internal priorities with a view to improving the quality of interventions, the lack of a diagnostic basis for carrying out priority reforms, along with corruption and the influence of the elites in the state.Langa hopes the document will help improve procedures.Langa described the Mozambique Country Program Evaluation as a mechanism to look at the country from the inside, taking into account that the World Bank’s action is always in coordination with that of the government, as well as to better understand the impact of the bank’s interventions, while acknowledging that some of the recommendations highlighted by the evaluation are already being fulfilled within the framework of the partnership with the government for the period 2023-2027.Reacting to the report’s recommendations, Mozambique’s Deputy Minister of Economy and Finance Amílcar Tivane acknowledged the merits of the document, but stressed the need for reflection on the architecture of the World Bank’s programs in order to better calibrate its interventions and optimise the resources made available to the country.“We think there is a problem here with the design of the programs. We have to rethink the entire architecture behind the design of these programs for Mozambique,” the deputy minister said.On vulnerabilities in relation to climate shocks, also identified as a pillar of the recommendations, the government recognizes that the intervention of the World Bank had , in the last 10 years, made a significant contribution to strengthening the institutional architecture.Regarding the agrarian sector, the government understands that the World Bank’s intervention falls short of expectations, leading Deputy Minister Tivane to urge multilateral credit institution to seek to understand the factors causing large investments to, paradoxically, generate small results.“These are important lessons for us to calibrate the assistance of the World Bank in the near future,” Tivane reiterated.The World Bank once again highlighted the negative impact of the ‘hidden debts’ on the economy, recalling that, prior to the scandal, Mozambique was among a select group of African countries recording annual growth of eight percent. (ICE MAPUTO)

Fonte notizia: AIM