Who pays for the ride

Good afternoon. The government has told public-transport operators it cannot guarantee when it will pay the compensation they are already owed. At the same time it will accept only a five-metical rise in fares, against the twenty that some operators are demanding. The two positions, held together, expose the weakness at the centre of urban transport in Mozambique. The state cannot control the service, and it cannot pay for it either.

The money it is behind on is real and recent. In May the Metropolitan Transport Agency paid out around 110.2m meticais (about $1.7m) to hold fares down after diesel rose 45.5%. In July, the transport ministry announced a further 128.8m meticais (about $2m) in a first phase, and admitted several operators were still waiting. The pattern goes back years. In 2022 the state fell four months behind and promised to clear the debt in January; by April it still had not. Operators and the government meet again on 26 October, and fares could rise on 1 November, but neither the date of payment nor the total owed is known.

The full Daily Briefing continues below for Pro subscribers. Subscribers to the Zitamar News tier can read the top half, including the full leader article, here.

Subscribe from just $12 a month

Public transport cannot run for long on a promise with no figure and no date. Operators buy fuel, tyres and spare parts and pay drivers whether or not the state meets its share. Moving people around a city is a social service. Hundreds of thousands of poor Mozambicans depend on it to reach work, and that work feeds families. A service priced to stay affordable does not earn enough to cover its own costs, let alone a profit. Someone has to make up the difference, and public ownership does not repeal that arithmetic. A state bus company held to low fares without a reliable subsidy ends up where the private operators already are, short of money for batteries and tyres; its managers then called incompetent for failing to make an omelette without eggs.

The operators' hold over the government comes from one fact: the state cannot replace them. The public companies carry only part of the demand, and carry it badly. So when private operators threaten to stop, the government faces thousands of people unable to reach jobs, schools and markets, and it gives way. In a small, weakly regulated market, that is an invitation to capture and to plain blackmail. Whoever controls the chapas controls the capital's mobility, and threatens to switch it off whenever the terms stop suiting him.