Key Vote Prompts President to Reshuffle Mozambique’s Cabinet

(Bloomberg) -- Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi made the biggest changes to his cabinet since coming into power in 2015, placing allies in key positions as the ruling party prepares for an elective congress in September.

Nyusi on Thursday named Adriano Maleiane, who had been finance minister since 2015, as the new prime minister, replacing Carlos do Rosário, according to a statement posted on the presidency website. Max Tonela, the former minerals and energy minister, will take over the finance portfolio, while Carlos Zacarias, previously the head of the oil and gas regulator, was assigned Tonela's post.

While Nyusi didn't give reasons for the changes, the moves came on the same day that he presided over a meeting of the ruling party's powerful political commission. Nyusi is trying to strengthen his position within the Frelimo party ahead of its congress, which will play a major role in determining its presidential candidate in 2024 elections. Nyusi, who is due to step down after serving two terms, has had to fend off accusations that he was involved in a $2 billion sovereign debt scandal.

The new ministers were sworn in on Friday morning in the capital, Maputo.

Tonela, an economist who was previously finance director at the state power utility, was among the most highly regarded members of Nyusi's cabinet while in charge of the mining and energy portfolio from 2017. He takes over as finance minister while Mozambique is in talks with the International Monetary Fund about a new economic program. The Washington-based lender froze the last one in 2016, when the government admitted it failed to disclose about $1.2 billion in debt.

As mineral resources and energy minister, Tonela was responsible for the development of Mozambique's natural-gas resources as a growing Islamic State-affiliated insurgency slowed their progress. He oversaw the final investment decision in 2019 of TotalEnergies SE's $20 billion Mozambique LNG project, which is Africa's biggest private investment. Two years later, an attack on a nearby town prompted the company to suspend the project indefinitely.

In his new role, Tonela will manage the finances of one of the world's poorest countries as it prepares to cash in on billions of dollars of natural-gas resources discovered in 2010. The first and smallest of three projects planned to export the fuel from beneath the waters of Mozambique's northeastern coast, Eni SpA's Coral floating LNG vessel, will start producing later this year. The central bank said in 2020 that the state would earn $96 billion over 25 years from the projects, though the insurgency has since cast doubt over some developments.

Nyusi, who was defense minister at the time the hidden debts were arranged, has faced growing questions about his role in the scandal that triggered a sovereign default and court cases spanning New York to London to Johannesburg.

His predecessor, Armando Guebuza, last month testified as a witness in a criminal trial on the deals that Nyusi would be best placed to answer questions about them, as he was head of the operational command that Guebuza tasked to implement the coastal protection system at the heart of the scandal. Nyusi has denied wrongdoing.