A 2003 ring-fenced fund is gone, and the fuel levy that fed it now has one landlord.
Boletim da República No. 134 of 16 July 2026 carried Decreto 39/2026, which is titled “Extingue o Fundo de Estradas, Fundo Público” and repeals Decreto 61/2019. The fund had existed since 2003, and for over two decades it was the body that collected the road-user charges and decided which stretches of the classified network got maintenance money.
The decree finishes a decision the Council of Ministers took at its 13th Ordinary Session in Maputo on 19 May: the fund is dissolved and its assets are integrated as autonomous patrimony of the Administração Nacional de Estradas (ANE, IP). For contractors, consultants and road users the question is not whether roads are funded but who now signs the cheque.
What the gazette actually says
Two decrees on the same day: one closes the fund, one rewrites the institutional framework for classified roads.
The BR No. 134 index lists six decrees. Alongside Decreto 39/2026 sits Decreto 35/2026, which revises and restructures the institutional framework for managing the classified road network. The two read as a pair: 35 redraws who manages the network, 39 removes the separate fund that used to pay for it.
The same Council session of 19 May created the Central de Aquisições do Estado (CAE, IP) to centralise public procurement and amended the Public Works Contracting Regulations to fit it, according to the O País report. The government framed the package as a search for effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and service quality. That announcement did not disclose staffing transitions, liabilities or a timetable, and neither does the gazette index.
Mechanism: how the fund was fed, and why the form matters
A ring-fenced fund separated the people who collect road revenue from the people who build roads.
The Fundo de Estradas describes its own revenue base as five streams: State Budget resources, a share of fuel levies set at 75 per cent of diesel and 50 per cent of petrol, road charges on heavy vehicles entering at the borders, toll revenue, and its own income such as bank interest and tender fees. It was set up by Decreto 22/2003 of 20 May, succeeding an earlier body that dated from 1989.
That design had a purpose. Fuel levy and toll money went into a dedicated account, outside the day-to-day competition for budget lines, and was spent on periodic and routine maintenance, bridges, rehabilitation, improvement and road safety. The risk of folding it into a line agency is that the money loses its walls. Government has said the assets become autonomous patrimony of ANE, which keeps a distinct balance sheet, but a separate balance sheet is not the same as a separate governing board with private-sector seats, which the old fund had.
Consequence: the fuel levy and the budget meet in one place
Recurrent maintenance now competes inside one institution with the new construction that politicians prefer to cut ribbons on.
In May 2023 the Council of Ministers approved an ICE Code regulation that directs excise on fuel to the roads, transport and energy sectors, as AIM reported at the time. Fuel-linked revenue for roads therefore sits in a wider fiscal arrangement than the fund alone, and how the new ANE patrimony receives it will decide whether maintenance is protected.
For contractors the practical changes are procedural. Payment certificates that once went to a fund with its own treasury discipline now route through ANE, and tenders will move toward the CAE channel once its operating rules are in place. Firms with outstanding certificates should ask now which entity inherited the liability, because the decree text reviewed here does not say.
The decisive step for road businesses
Get the transfer schedule in writing before the next rainy season.
Maintenance work is seasonal, and the contracts for the dry months are normally signed in the first half of the year. Any gap while assets, accounts and payment authority change hands lands on the smallest subcontractors first, because they hold the least working capital.
The action for a road contractor, a plant-hire firm or a materials supplier is concrete. Request from ANE a written statement of which legal entity now owes each open payment, confirm the bank account and signatory for new certificates, and register for CAE tendering before the first packages appear. For lenders, the same review applies to receivables assigned against fund obligations: the debtor has changed, and the paperwork should say so.
Sources
- Instituto Nacional de Imprensa de Moçambique (INM). “BR Nº 134 de 16.07.26, Boletim da República I Série”. 16 July 2026. https://inm.gov.mz/pt-br/content/br-n%C2%BA-134-de-160726-boletim-da-rep%C3%BAblica-i-serie
- O País. “Governo extingue Fundo de Estradas e cria Central de Aquisições do Estado”. 20 May 2026. https://opais.co.mz/governo-extingue-fundo-de-estradas-e-cria-central-de-aquisicoes-do-estado/
- Fundo de Estradas. “Fundo de Estradas – Breve Historial”. https://www.fe.gov.mz/sobre-nos/breve-historial
- Agência de Informação de Moçambique (AIM). “Receitas do imposto sobre combustíveis revertem para sector de estradas, transportes e energia”. 31 May 2023. https://aimnews.org/2023/05/31/receitas-do-imposto-sobre-combustiveis-revertem-para-sector-de-estradas-transportes-e-energia/
