The mission from the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) that has been working in Mozambique since
last Thursday believes advances have been made in restoring international
confidence in the Mozambican government.The mission, headed by Michel Lazare,
an assistant director at the IMF, met on Wednesday with Prime Minister Carlos
Agostinho do Rosario. Lazare told reporters “the meeting was fruitful and there
are advances in complying with the measures defined to restore confidence”.
But Lazare, who also headed
the previous IMF mission in June, declined to give any details or say what
measures he had in mind. He simply added that the meeting President Filipe
Nyusi had in Washington earlier this month with IMF and World Bank officials,
including IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, “were a success”.
After the meeting between
Nyusi and Lagarde, the IMF announced that an independent, international audit
will go ahead into the government-guaranteed loans for over a billion US
dollars that were hidden from the Mozambican public and the IMF alike until
April of this year.The controversy arises over three government guaranteed
loans to quasi-public companies in 2013 and 2014, the closing years of the
government of Nyusi’s predecessor, Armando Guebuza. Between them these loans
amounted to over two billion US dollars, and added 20 per cent to the
Mozambican foreign debt.One of the loans was public – this was the 850 million
dollars of bonds launched on the European bond market by the Mozambique Tuna
Company (EMATUM). The main banks handling the bond issue were Credit Suisse and
VTB of Russia.
But the same two banks lent
large, but undisclosed sums to the companies Proindicus (622 million dollars)
and Mozambique Assets Management (MAM – 535 million dollars). Proindicus was
set up to provide security to offshore oil and gas operations and to other
shipping in the Mozambique Channel, while MAM is to sell naval maintenance and
repair services.It is these latter two loans and their government guarantees
that angered the IMF. When the loans became public knowledge in April, the IMF
suspended its programme with Mozambique, including the second instalment of a
283 million dollar loan from the Standby Credit Facility (SCF). Other partners
followed the IMF’s lead – notably all 14 donors and funding agencies that
provided direct support for the Mozambican state budget suspended all further
disbursements.
The IMF suspected corruption
was involved in the loans. In an interview with the BBC in May Lagarde said
“When we see a country and a programme with the IMF where international
community money is committed, that is not respecting its financial disclosure
engagement, which is clearly concealing corruption, we suspend the programme. We
did that just recently with Mozambique.’The main demand raised by the IMF, and
echoed by Mozambique’s other western partners, such as the United States and
Britain, has been for an independent audit which would track down exactly what
happened with all the money involved.At his meeting with Lagarde, Nyusi made it
clear that the government now accepts this. An IMF statement on the meeting
“welcomed the initial steps being taken on the agreed reforms and policies”,
but also “stressed the need for further policy action aimed at stabilizing the
economy and for more decisive efforts to improve transparency, in particular an
international and independent audit of the companies that were funded under the
loans disclosed in April 2016”.Lagarde, the statement said, “welcomed that the
President indicated the Government of Mozambique’s willingness to work with the
IMF on the terms-of-reference for this process—to be initiated by the office of
the Attorney General—and to implement it”.
0 comentários:
Post a Comment