Maputo — The Mozambican government has disbursed 824.6 million meticais (about 12.8 million US dollars, at the current exchange rate) to fund thousands of projects throughout the country under the Local Economic Development Fund (FDEL).
According to the government spokesperson and Minister of Planning and Development, Salim Valá, who was speaking to reporters on Tuesday, after a meeting of the Council of Ministers (cabinet), the amount will boost local economies and improve the living conditions of communities.
The resources were allocated based on criteria such as the poverty index and population density, covering 209 administrative posts, distributed across 144 districts and 65 municipalities.
"The process of finalizing the administrative aspects related to the contracts between the State and the borrowers, including the repayment plans, is currently underway", he said.
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The data presented by the Minister showed that FDEL received a total of 253,440 project proposals nationwide, of which 3,384 have been approved, with some in the financing phase.
The northern province of Nampula leads in the number of funded projects, with 3,530, followed by the central province of Tete (1,903), the northern province of Cabo Delgado (1,530), and the central provinces of Zambézia (1,125) and Sofala (1,155).
According to Valá, borrowers are requesting greater agility in the financing of approved projects, as well as reinforcement in mentoring and monitoring, to ensure the correct implementation of the initiatives.
The Government hopes that the funded projects will contribute to local socio-economic development and ensure the sustainability of the fund.
FDEL is supposed to be a rotating fund. The money takes the form, not of grants, but of loans. When it is repaid, the money can be used to support other projects.
This, said Vala, means "that other Mozambicans, at another stage, can also benefit from the resources to finance their entrepreneurial activities".
Among the main challenges, the spokesperson highlighted the need for continuous training of beneficiaries, emphasizing the importance of the involvement of local technical staff in monitoring and training borrowers.
FDEL was launched by President Daniel Chapo in 2025, with an initial capital of approximately 15 million dollars. The fund aims to boost rural and local economies, focusing on young people and women, through the granting of credit with subsidized interest rates of five per cent and repayment terms of between 12 and 24 months.
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The FDEL is quite openly a re-edition of the scheme known as "the seven million meticais' introduced a quarter of a century ago by one of Chapo's predecessors, Armando Guebuza.
Under Guebuza's scheme every district in the country received annually seven million meticais (about 109,000 US dollars, at the current exchange rate), but worth much more at the time. The money was then distributed to people who presented viable projects for improving food security or boosting employment.
The money handed out under the "seven million meticais' scheme, was supposed to be repaid. But most of the beneficiaries treated the money as a gift, not a loan.
The Guebuza government made no serious attempt to recover the money, and the scheme was never audited.
The current government says this time the beneficiaries must repay their loans.
