Sharp increase in Mozambique’s public sector wage bill has been driven by increases in salaries, rather than increases in workforce – World Bank

The Mozambican public sector “is not oversized compared to regional and income peers,” with its 357,000 civil servants in 2023 but it is nevertheless constrained by the “sharp increase” in the wage bill following the 2022 reform, the World Bank says. “The sharp increase in the wage bill has been driven by increases in salaries, rather than increases in the workforce,” reads the World Bank’s Mozambique Economic Update report, released yesterday and titled “From Fragility to Stability – Why Fiscal Reforms Cannot Wait.” The weight of the public sector wage bill rose from less than 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2000 to 15% in 2025, according to World Bank estimates. “Base salaries have increased rapidly following the 2022 wage bill reform,” the report notes.

The wage bill grew by 40% between 2021 and 2022 alone – the period when the new Single Salary Table (TSU) was introduced in the country, the report points out. “Part of this reflects the incorporation of some allowances in the base salary. The size of the public sector has not increased rapidly in recent years,” the document emphasises.

Mozambique had 357,000 public servants in 2023, “a 2.9% average annual increase over the past six years,” it notes. “The public sector is not oversized compared with its regional and income peers,” the World Bank report admits. “In 2022, public sector employment accounted for 3.9 percent of the working-age population (15-64 years), compared to the 8.3 percent average across the subset of SSA [Sub-Saharan Africa] countries for which data are available during 2020-2022,” the report adds.

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“As a result, international comparisons place Mozambique’s public sector average earnings as a major outlier globally,” it notes. Mozambique’s wage bill “remains the largest source of fiscal pressures, contributing to high deficits, large borrowing needs, and the accumulation of expenditure arrears,” the report reads. The Mozambican President, Daniel Chapo, pledged in July 2025 to correct “inconsistencies” in the TSU, as a way of ensuring fairness for civil servants and state agents. The concerns raised came from employees in various state sectors, such as education and health, who complained to the President about delays in overtime payment systems and demanded “better classification” under the TSU, which in the past three years has been heavily criticised, culminating in strikes by teachers, doctors, judges and other professional groups.

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