"MOZAMBIQUE HAS ANOTHER ‘LOAN PILE’ NOT MADE PUBLIC” REVEALS IMF

Mozambique's total debt volume will have reached USD 11.6 billion last year, of these USD 9.8 billion correspond to external debt.

The Mozambican public debt scandal continues to make people talk abroad. This time a senior official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a few days ago in Washington DC, in the United States of America, that Mozambique has one more "loan pile" not made public. Without revealing the full value of the "lump of loans" that remain hidden, Sean Nolan, deputy director of Strategic Policy for the IMF, recalls that "Mozambique is a high example of things that have gone wrong", referring To the debts contracted in the last two years of the mandate of the former President of the Republic Armando Emílio Guebuza, who pushed the country to the abyss. Officially, the Maputo Executive recognizes a debt estimated at more than two billion US dollars in loan, contracted by the Mozambican Tuna Company (EMATUM), Proindicus and Mozambique Asset Management (MAM), guaranteed by the State, but the IMF Says "there is more than has been revealed so far". This finding has led to the suspension, since 2016, of financial assistance from the IMF, the World Bank (IBRD) and the donor group to the G-14 State Budget (OE). Donors require a forensic audit of public accounts as one of the conditions to unlock funding. It should be noted that Mozambique's total debt volume will have reached USD 11.6 billion last year, of these USD 9.8 billion correspond to external debt and the remaining domestic debt.

IMF Communications in Maputo that Mozambique is compared to countries like Yemen, destroyed by the civil war, in addition to neighboring Zambia, with a large deficit in public accounts. "There are at least 10 countries (Mozambique included) where there are specific emerging problems and debt levels are rising," said the deputy director of Strategic Policy at that international financial institution. Financial default ("default"). Mozambique fully and formally assumed on Monday its inability to settle the January 2017 installment of USD 59.7 million related to sovereign debt maturing in 2023, thus entering into default ("default"). "The Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Mozambique wants to inform the holders of the USD-726.5 million maturing in 2023 issued by the Republic that the payment of interest on the notes, in the amount of USD 59.7 million, which is due to 18 January, will not be paid by the Republic, "reads an official government statement. In the document, Mozambique recalls that it had warned in October about the lack of liquidity during this year and stresses that it views lenders as "important long-term partners whose support for the necessary resolution of the debt process will be critical to the country's future success ". "The deterioration of the Republic's fiscal and macroeconomic situation severely affected the country's public finances" and thus "debt repayment capacity is therefore extremely limited in 2017, and does not allow the Republic to make timely payment of interest of these securities," the statement added.

In the text of a page, the Ministry of Economy and Finance also notes that the executive is "actively working with the International Monetary Fund to establish the conditions necessary for a rapid resumption of financial assistance to Mozambique," an initiative presented as "Of critical importance" in improving public finances and stabilizing the macroeconomic situation.

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