Mozambique’s state-owned airline LAM has undergone restructuring and has expressed plans for fleet renewal and expansion into intercontinental and cargo operations.
LAM’s management was taken over by South African company Fly Modern Ark in April 2023, leading to a decline in the airline’s debt levels.
Recent inspections have revealed anomalies in the supply of jet fuel, with discrepancies in fuel quantities. LAM experienced fuel shortages, leading to flight delays, and is facing a USD70 million debt to the petroleum supplier. There is disagreement between the airline’s restructuring team and suppliers regarding responsibility and the cause of the situation.
Inspections had found anomalies in the supply of jet fuel. Director of restructuring, Sérgio Matos said: “if an aircraft has fuel capacity for around 80,000 litres, in the documents the same aircraft is being fuelled at 95,000. So the question is, where are the remaining 15,000”.
“In the last three months of evaluations we saw that the difference we were having was in the order of USD2m or USD3m. In December alone, there was a deficit of USD3.2m.”
“The collection of cash is done by security companies. When we tried to find out, at LAM points of sale, how it is done and when they receive it, it was found that sometimes the deposit was made three days later, which means that money is collected from the company and then it is stored somewhere for two or three days, and only after that comes the borderô statement of credits and debits.
“There have been cases of employees who use or have used company funds to buy their own homes. When these employees are contacted, each comes up with an excuse, and we believe that this may be the same group that uses the media to deliberately portray the company in a bad light.”
Matos further said that his team had discovered a LAM account in Malawi with USD1.2m to which no one in the company appeared to have access. He previously claimed that LAM’s financial success was achieved through “confidential financial gymnastics.”
