Business Corruption

Companies report that bribery is not uncommon when dealing with environmental inspections in Mozambique. For instance, Global Integrity 2007 reports that business inspections by government officials to ensure public environmental standards are often carried out in an arbitrary and ad-hoc manner, and bribes are sometimes extracted from companies in return for favourable treatment or expedited processing. Likewise, the US Department of State 2011 also reports that environmental regulations often are disregarded or enforced randomly to generate revenues from fines.

Companies operating in Maputo should be aware that water-theft is becoming a serious problem. According to Transparency International's Global Corruption Report 2008, inefficiencies and poor supervision have given rise to a flourishing 'water-mafia' in Maputo. In an informal water market, around 200 small-scale suppliers channel water from private, unregulated boreholes through self-built networks to thousands of clients, covering as much as 40% of all city districts.

Political Corruption

According to the International Institute for Environment and Development's Biofuels, land access and rural livelihoods in Mozambique 2010, corruption has been identified as a constraint particularly affecting the natural resource management sector in Mozambique.

The IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre assesses in an October 2009 article that there is a great risk of corruption in Mozambique's water section. The IRC will provide guidance on the development of a water anti-corruption strategy in Mozambique and has in this context conducted research on the sector and concludes that low levels of public accountability, relatively young institutions and major planned investments in the sector make the water sector an area in which corruption can easily occur.

According to CMI Corruption and Industrial Fishing in Africa 2008, agreements granting foreign companies access to marine resources may have an impact on the independence of policy makers, particularly when the state is dependent on revenues from these access agreements. An example of such a situation is the lack of law enforcement against illegal fishing and logging carried out by Chinese companies in Mozambique. According to the report, the lack of prosecutions in relation to these illegal commercial activities can be explained by Chinas economic importance in the country.