The chairman of the Board of Directors of Mozambique’s
National Hydrocarbons Company (Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos – ENH) said
on Thursday that the US$2 billion guarantee that Mozambique is to issue to
enter the gas business does not entail risk.
“There are rumours that it is another state debt, as
if it were something that will increase the financial debt, but it is not true.
Everything has been well studied and everything is taken care of,” Omar Mithá
told reporters on the sidelines of a sector meeting in Maputo.
The ENH leader reiterated yesterday what the Deputy
Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Augusto de Sousa, said in an
interview with Lusa last week when he announced that the guarantee would have a
term of five years. The issue regards
ENH’s stake in the Anadarko-led consortium that will exploit natural gas in
Area 1 in the Rovuma basin in the north of the country. ENH’s share will be
financed by loans and the lender requires a guarantee. For Mithá, the sovereign guarantee is “only a
formalisation that financial institutions ask of each of the investors”. After
the construction of the plants, “this guarantee falls away”.
“During the construction period, the project has no
assets, and what financial institutions are saying is that they need a
guarantee. This is a guarantee only for the construction period, in case
materially adverse condition arise, which I think is rare,” Mitha said. This is different to what happened in the
case of hidden debts, Augusto de Sousa told Lusa, referring to a case under
investigation by the justice system and in which the country remains unaware of
the fate of US$2 billion obtained on the basis of guarantees issued by the
government, undisclosed to parliament and international partners, in 2013 and
2014. The issue of the new guarantee in
favour of ENH is foreseen in the proposed State Budget for 2019, which will be
discussed by the Mozambican parliament before the end of the year.
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