The evaluation commission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which has been in Mozambique since last week, as part of the work for the new support plan, met with the Confederation of Business Associations (CTA), for the consultation process on the national macro-economic situation.
The head of the IMF mission in Mozambique, Pabblo Lopez Murphy, explained that "we are just here to find out about the biggest challenges that businesspeople face in Mozambique, as we believe that this is an important start to the dialogue with the Mozambican government.
But what are the constraints that the private sector says they face? "We can say that what concerns them most is the difficulty in accessing finance, because access to credit is challenging, especially in a context of high interest rates. They have difficulties in finding viable projects," Pabblo Murphy said, and then concluded that "there are other concerns that have to do with the logistics area, infrastructure and skills."
Also speaking about the challenges facing the private sector, Agostinho Vuma, chairman of CTA, added that "the other issue has to do with importing fuel, where the Bank of Mozambique's contribution to fuel bills will fall from 100% to 30%. So this is a concern that will put even more pressure on the private sector in Mozambique in all sectors of activity."
"We also discussed the issue of the Sovereign Fund and the Mutual Guarantee Fund as aspects that can maximise the performance of the private sector so that our economy finds alternative sources of financing," explained Agostinho Vuma.
Questioned about the expectation of the business sector regarding the most recent discovery of the new gas reserves, Agostinho Vuma replied that "there is no doubt that we will have a new performance. We are pleased that the gas sector in Mozambique is being advertised almost everywhere in the country and that encourages us because what interests us most is the performance of local content".
The IMF technical assistance mission arrived in Maputo last Monday and aims to carry out the second monitoring of the government's programme with the IMF under which the Fund provided funding of US$470 million a year ago to be applied until 2025. It will also analyse the latest macroeconomic developments relating to the year 2022 and the outlook for the medium term.
No comments:
Post a Comment