The International Monetary Fund said it’s ready to start negotiations with Mozambique about a financing program next month, more than five years after the lender halted its previous deal in the wake of the country’s $2 billion debt scandal.
Agreeing on a so-called extended credit facility — which could come with $317 million in concessional financing — would be a landmark for the IMF and Mozambique. Relations between the two soured in 2016, when the government owned up to about $1.2 billion of government-guaranteed loans that it had failed to disclose to the fund under the terms of their agreement.
Discussions on supporting the government’s program with an extended credit facility are scheduled to begin soon,” the IMF said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “Staff stand ready to commence negotiations in late January 2022, in accordance with the authorities’ preferred timeline.
The fund has previously said negotiations would depend on the government’s appetite for a program, and President Filipe Nyusi’s government has so far avoided asking the IMF for a new bailout. The government has been anticipating billions of dollars in revenue from offshore natural gas discoveries to start flowing this decade, though an Islamic State-linked insurgency in the north of the country has delayed the projects by years.
While a 3.4-million-ton per year floating platform Eni SpA has built will start producing liquefied natural gas for export next year, a $20 billion project about four times the size that TotalEnergies SE is leading has been delayed until at least 2026. An even bigger project ExxonMobil Corp. plans nearby has been deferred indefinitely.
Source: Reuters
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