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Mozambique: IMF Executives Visit Country
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
21 February 2008
Posted to the web 21 February 2008
Maputo
A delegation of members of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Executive Board arrived in Maputo on Wednesday for a three day working visit.
Mozambique's National Treasury Director, Antonio Laice, told reporters that the IMF delegation has come to Mozambique to learn first hand about the real situation in the field.
"The IMF has been approving programmes for Mozambique for many years now, and they have decided to learn first hand about Mozambican reality, analyse the situation in the field, and learn about the development of the country and the constraints", said Laice. "Thus, when they have to take some decisions in the future they will be able to take into account the situation that they had the opportunity to see in Mozambique".
He added that the relationship between Mozambique and the IMF is not strictly financial, but that the IMF has also become an advisor to the Mozambican government on macroeconomic issues.
"The IMF advises the government on measures it should adopt for a balanced budget, and how to combine financial and monetary management", he said. "It also advises on reforms in structural adjustment through measures to create a better environment for the functioning of the private sector, among other issues".
The IMF delegation will visit the country's largest factory, the Mozal aluminium smelter, and the project to increase Maputo's supply of drinking water supply, currently under way in the suburb of Laulane.
The delegation will be received by President Armando Guebuza, and will hold meetings with Finance Minister Manuel Chang and the governor of the Central Bank, Ernesto Gove, with the main employers' association, the CTA (Confederation of Mozambican Business Associations), and with the NGO coalition, the Mozambican Debt Group (GMD).
Currently the IMF has no loan programme with Mozambique. The final 2.4 million dollars of a 17.1 million dollar loan under the IMF's Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) was disbursed last June. Since then, Mozambique's relations with the IMF have been governed by a Policy Support Instrument (PSI).
According to the IMF, PSIs are "designed for low-income countries that may not need, or want, IMF financial assistance, but still seek IMF advice, monitoring, and endorsement of their policies".
This is the first visit by officials of either of the Bretton Woods institutions since the riots of 5 February, which paralysed Maputo for a day as protestors successfully demanded a reduction in fares charged by the privately owned minibuses that provide much of the city's passenger transport.
The riots were widely seen as resulting from the government adherence to the recipes handed down by the IMF and the World Bank - so much so that the daily paper "Noticias" ran an editorial describing the disturbances as "The price of compliance".
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Instead of allowing fares to rise, the government has now promised to subsidise the fuel used by the minibuses. It is not yet clear how this subsidy will be paid for, or whether the IMF will regard it as in line with the Letter of Intent that finance Minister Manuel Change, and the governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Ernesto Gove, sent to the IMF in November.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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