Published in furtherafrica.com
The discoveries of natural gas in Rovuma, Pande & Temane, Angoche and Zambeze placed Mozambique in the list of the top 10 world’s largest reserves, being the most sought-after destination by oil & gas investors across the sub-Saharan African region.
These discoveries ended up leading the country in key legal reforms aiming to increase and facilitate investment. Considering this new reality, Decree 2/2014 of December 2nd was approved, establishing a special framework applicable to the Rovuma Basin project. Above all, this regime brings flexibility when it comes to expatriates hiring process.
Benefiting companies and sub-contractors’ expatriates, it allows the entry in Mozambique to be made on the basis of business visas that can be acquired on arrival.
As the Rovuma Decree was yet to be fully implemented, another step has been made very recently, when the Ministry of Labor introduced an online portal for submission and processing of applications for all companies and their approved sub-contractors, since their plan of development is approved. This platform allows exclusively the application of expatriate skillset that is required for Rovuma Basin project.
Such measure enables the reduction of waiting time to process work permits to 3 or 4 working days for short-term jobs or 5 to 7 working days for long-term jobs, while standard processing of such applications has generally been 3 to 4 weeks.
Furthermore, for the recruitment of any expatriate skillset for Rovuma Basin projects, requirements such as equivalence certificate is no longer required. In addition, expatriates with approved work permit through this online portal may get the residence permit upon arrival.
Published by Duarte Marques da Cruz