Maputo, Dec. 18, 2025 (Lusa) - Mozambican president Daniel Chapo warned on Thursday, while delivering his state of the nation address in parliament, that the fight against corruption will move forward "whatever the cost" in all sectors, and that no one will go unpunished.
"No illegal act will be treated as an internal matter. The law is the same for all of us, including me, who am reading it. Whatever the cost," said Daniel Chapo, as he presented his first report on the state of the nation, as required by the constitution, to the parliament in Maputo.
"Corruption will not disappear in a day, we are aware of that. But we are absolutely certain that today, in Mozambique, there is more fear of committing illegal acts than there was a few years ago," he added, assuring that the "guidance is clear": "No case of corruption will be ignored. No public official or relative of a leader will be protected."
In addition, he said, "all strategic sectors are being reassessed" in terms of contracts, such as energy, mineral resources, infrastructure, health, education, forests and logistics.
"Contracts that are not in line with the national interest, which is the interest of the Mozambican people, are being renegotiated, corrected or revoked," he warned.
Daniel Chapo, sworn in on 15 January as the fifth President of Mozambique, said that in the first year of his term of office he declared "war on ghost employees, abuse of public assets, simulated tenders, collusion in public procurement, demands for commissions, and the collection of illicit payments for the provision of public services," among other things.
"This commitment is to clean up the state from the inside out. And the action has already begun. State reform is an act of courage. It means shaking up the deepest structures of public administration, confronting vested interests, widespread habits and parallel systems that for years have undermined citizens' trust," he assured.
He recalled that in his inauguration speech in January, he criticised "certain sectors of the state" that "were undermined by abuses of power".
"There were ghost employees sucking up public resources. There were cartels enriching themselves at the expense of the state. Demanding commissions to do public work is theft. There were managers wasting resources, and the state could not continue to live with these deviations, we said at the inauguration. Today, with satisfaction, we have the honour to affirm that the Mozambican state is being rebuilt on principles of integrity, discipline, transparency and accountability," he added.
He recalled that "all leaders and members of public bodies have made a sworn declaration of the inexistence of incompatibility for the exercise of their office," an "act that seems simple" but which "constitutes a paradigm shift."
He added that the State Procurement Centre is being set up to "prevent abuse and restore the dignity of the national public procurement system in Mozambique".
He also stressed that laws creating the State Inspectorate General and the Inspectorate General for Food Safety and Economic Activity had recently been approved by parliament: "To ensure that the state serves the common good, without dispersing services, and that the economy operates with clear, predictable and fair rules."
The country, he said, is moving "towards a model of governance where responsibility, transparency and integrity are not just words, but practices of Mozambican society" and recalled that regarding the so-called "ghost employees" - more than 18,000 removed from the payroll - a "rigorous verification of attendance, biometric registration and updating of nominal lists in all sectors" had begun.
"Thousands of suspicious records were identified and we immediately stopped salary payments. To date, some have still not appeared because they do not exist. The country is changing, my brothers," he concluded.
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