Paghe in Mozambico: un'attività riservata

Employing in Mozambique means accepting that the working language is Portuguese. It is the language of contracts, payslips, filings and labour hearings, and a courtesy translation never removes the need for the Portuguese version. The currency is the metical, a floating national currency with no peg to the euro or the rand.

Social security is run by the Instituto Nacional de Segurança Social (INSS, the national social security institute), which registers both the employer and each employee and operates its own filing platform. Personal income tax is withheld at source by the employer on behalf of the Autoridade Tributária de Moçambique (AT, the revenue authority).

Two features shape market access. First, registration in the commercial register does not amount to authorisation to trade: an alvará, the activity licence, must be added. Second, the accounting profession has been regulated since the creation of the Ordem dos Contabilistas e Auditores de Moçambique (OCAM, the institute of accountants and auditors), which reserves the title of contabilista certificado to its members and deals directly with the INSS and the AT.

Employing non-Mozambican staff is governed by a quota regime tied to headcount, with notifications or authorisations from the labour ministry. This is often the most constraining issue: an assignment is prepared before signature, not afterwards, and the quota position should be checked before an offer is made.

An employer without an alvará is registered but not authorised to trade. A Mozambican company is incorporated before the Conservatória do Registo das Entidades Legais, obtains its NUIT taxpayer number from the revenue authority, and then that activity licence from the competent ministry or municipality.

INSS registration follows, for the company and then for each employee.

Written and drafted in Portuguese, the contract requires a choice between an open-ended and a fixed-term engagement, subject to strict conditions that must be tested against the role actually performed.

Payslip particulars, monthly income tax withholding, electronic contribution returns and the annual reconciliation obligations make up running payroll. Check as well that the staff register is kept and the internal rules displayed, both of which the labour inspectorate examines first.

The cost of termination, finally, varies with length of service and with the ground relied upon, and is anticipated like everything else, role by role rather than as an average.

The social clearance document has a precise name, certidão de quitação automatizada, and is generated by the employer itself on the INSS electronic platform. A payment slip is no substitute, and a stale certificate says nothing about the current month.

There is, by contrast, no general personal data protection statute. Only certain digital operators register with the information technology regulator; no European-style acknowledgement of filing can therefore be demanded from a payroll firm, and employee protection has to be carried entirely by the processing agreement.

Professional vocabulary holds one last difficulty. The label técnico de contas predates the creation of OCAM, still circulates widely, and on its own evidences no current registration: the cédula profissional is what counts, and a firm still using the older term should be asked to produce it.