PESOE 2026 at the October checkpoint: one of six gas-funded projects paid in full

October 31, 2026

Wordless fine-line illustration: A ledger of six unfinished structures on a river plain at first light, a completed bridge span reaching the far bank while a hospital frame, school walls and a dam wall stand at different heights beside it

A six-line ledger of Rovuma gas projects, MT2,943.4m earmarked and 37.37% applied by June, is the cleanest test the budget will face when the third quarter closes.

On 31 October the third quarter of PESOE 2026 will have been closed for a month, and the budget’s cleanest test is one ledger. Of MT2,943.4m earmarked from Rovuma gas revenue for six named projects, MT1,099.90m, or 37.37%, had been applied by 30 June, and a single bridge accounts for MT1,000m of that. Carta de Moçambique drew the figures from the Ministry of Finance half-year report.

This is a forward note, written in late September, and the third-quarter report is not yet public. The projects below stand at Approved or Financed on the lifecycle ladder, which runs Proposed, Approved, Financed, Contracted, Under Construction, Commissioning and Operational. Money applied is evidence that a contract exists and work has begun. An allocation on its own is a promise. The checkpoint will tell a reader which promises have moved one rung.

The six-line ledger as it stood at 30 June

One project spent everything, one spent nothing, and four sat between 0.9% and 57%.

According to the Carta de Moçambique report, the Ponte sobre o Rio Save at Massangena in Gaza province applied its full MT1,000m. The Hospital Distrital de Chibuto, with MT500m allocated, applied nothing. Escolas Básicas applied MT16.73m of MT800m, or 2.09%. The Barragem de Locomue in Niassa applied MT76.96m of MT134.8m, or 57.10%. Urbanização e terra infra-estruturada applied MT3.20m of MT365.2m, and the Autoridade Tributária fiscal posts applied MT3.01m of MT143.4m, or 2.10%. The government gave no reasons for the pattern, as the report records.

Strip out the bridge and the other five lines applied MT99.90m of MT1,943.4m, a rate of 5.1%. The headline of 37% is therefore a statement about one project. For a supplier, the more useful reading is that five of six lines were at the start of their payment cycle with half the fiscal year gone.

Mechanism: how an earmark becomes a payment

A budget line spends only when a contract has been signed and a certified invoice reaches the Treasury.

The route runs from appropriation to tender, from tender to contract, from contract to a certificate of works or a delivery note, and from the certificate to payment through the State’s single account. Each step takes weeks, and a line that has not cleared procurement cannot show spending, only an unused balance. A single large contract can absorb a whole allocation in one payment, which is how one project reads 100% while its neighbours read below 3%.

The funding side adds a second constraint. The State collected US$43.83m from Rovuma gas in the first half, US$12.47m in the first quarter and US$31.36m in the second, as Carta de Moçambique reported from the PESOE report. At about 64 meticais to the dollar, which is our own conversion, that is near MT2.8bn, close to the size of the earmarked envelope. The earmark is therefore sized to roughly one half-year of gas receipts, and the receipts arrive in dollars that the Treasury must convert and release.

Reading each line against the ladder

The evidence a reader should ask for differs by project, and the weakest lines are the social ones.

For the Ponte sobre o Rio Save, the open question is the next rung, since a fully applied allocation says money has left the Treasury and does not say the span is finished. The right evidence is a completion certificate or a dated site visit. For the Barragem de Locomue, 57.10% applied is consistent with Under Construction, and the useful question is whether the balance of MT57.8m is scheduled for the second half or must be rephased into 2027.

The Hospital Distrital de Chibuto and the Escolas Básicas lines are the two where citizens, not only contractors, are waiting. With MT500m and MT800m allocated and almost nothing applied, they read as Approved with funding earmarked and no sign of a contract. A tender notice, a contract award or an advance payment would each move them a rung, and each is public or discoverable. Absence of all three by the October close would be a finding in itself.

The wider ledger around the six lines

Revenue reached 95% of its half-year target while spending reached 36% of its annual limit.

The Council of Ministers briefing reported by Club of Mozambique put first-half revenue at MT183.3bn, or 45% of the annual plan. Carta de Moçambique’s account of the same briefing gives spending of MT188.2bn, 36.2% of the plan, a gap of about MT5bn, and adds the government spokesperson’s count of the Plano Económico e Social: of 127 planned activities, 78 were met, 27 partly met and 22, or 17%, not implemented.

The Rovuma ledger is a small part of that picture but a legible one, because each line is named, priced and dated. That makes it a sample of the whole. If a budget that raised 45% of its revenue spent only 36% of its envelope, the shortfall in spending sits in lines like these, where procurement has not reached the cash stage.

What the October close will reveal

Four readings will tell a contractor whether the second half is a catch-up or a carry-over.

The first reading is whether the Save bridge remains the only line at 100%, or whether the Escolas Básicas and Urbanização lines have crossed 25%. The second is whether the Hospital Distrital de Chibuto shows any applied balance at all, which would indicate a signed contract. The third is the gas receipt for the third quarter against the US$31.36m of the second. The fourth is timing. The half-year figures reached the public on 11 August, six weeks after the period closed, so a third-quarter report would arrive around mid-November, after the signal date of this piece.

A supplier tendering for any of the five slow lines should ask the contracting unit for its procurement stage in writing and record it against the ladder. A lender or pre-financier should price the lines at carry-over risk until a certificate of works is paid. The action for every reader is to keep this six-row ledger as a standing file and score it on 31 October, line by line, before any narrative arrives.