External publications

Aptos para alcançar os seus objectivos? Obstáculos de ordem administrativa à mobilização da receita local nos municípios moçambicanos

von Schiller, Armin / Salvador Forquilha / Saida Bunk / Dominique Klawonn / Jonathan Krull / Alina Sennewald / Conrad Steinhilber / Juliane von Boeselager
External Publications (2018)

in: Forquilha, Salvador (ed.), Desafios para Moçambique 2018, Maputo: Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Económicos, 33-64

ISBN: 978-989-8464-42-2
Information

This chapter relies on novel data and empirical research to gain insights into the challenges and opportunities that Mozambican municipalities themselves identity with regard to local revenue mobilisation. Too often, the discussion on this topic is driven by perceptions from actors outside the municipalities. In this chapter, we deliberately look at revenue collection from the angle of municipalities and answer the following main questions: What are the main challenges the municipalities themselves perceive to limit their capacity to mobilise revenue? Do bigger and smaller municipalities perform differently? To what degree do administrative constraints influence the revenue composition? Taking this angle on the increasingly relevant topic of domestic revenue mobilisation is valuable for various reasons. In portraying the situation, we do address the capacities regarding different types of revenue sources and disaggregate the steps involved in the collection. This allows us to draw a clear picture of where the main problems are. Qualitative data collected in over 100 semi-structured interviews with different groups of actors in 11 municipalities add nuance on a discussion that commonly is hold at a very abstract level. Thereby, the results and evidence presented here provides a new basis for discussing, what specifically to be done to support revenue mobilisation in Mozambican municipalities but also the more general discussion on how to effectively distribute revenue competencies among levels of government. Only if we understand what municipalities can and cannot do, observers will be able to blame them of not being willing to collect revenue.