Legal and material dimension of the financial autonomy of the municipality of Nampula city (Mozambique)

Nelsone David Bechane Chapananga

Keywords

Local authority; financial autonomy; sustainability.

Abstract

Formally the Mozambican Constitution (CRM) creates the local authorities in the condition of surviving at the expense of own revenues collected within its territory and managed autonomously by the respective organs. However, considering the 20 years of the existence of municipalities, we have the desire to find out if the Municipal Council of the City of Nampula (CMCN) already enjoys, legally and materially, the financial autonomy constitutionally foreseen. Studies by us already conducted in Lichinga and Cuamba have shown that a large number of local authorities in Mozambique survive annually at the expense of State budget transfers, and cannot even achieve more than 30% of their overall planned revenues. The study followed the correlational method based on the quantitative approach. And as a data collection technique we used the proportional scale, with a structure composed of four levels, namely: variable, attributes, values and relation. In practice, it was found that CMCN's own revenues accounted for only 40.35% of the overall budget for the three years, which allowed us to conclude that the municipality is autonomous when comparing current revenues with current expenditures but comparing only revenues with current expenditure, it is far from being autonomous and sustainable.