Mozambique's Minister of Economy and Finance, Max Tonela, stated on 27 June that the country will be able to meet this year's debt servicing obligations.

According to a report in the daily newspaper "O Pais" on 29 June, Mozambique's total debt stands at US$14.4 billion. 70 per cent of this is foreign debt and 30 per cent is domestic debt.

Speaking at a press conference to which only foreign journalists were invited (although "O Pais" obtained a recording of the Minister's remarks), Tonela said that this year's debt servicing will be about US$1.5 billion. To date, the country has paid its creditors US$764 million, or 48.6 per cent of this year's debt service. Tonela guaranteed that the government will be able to pay the rest by December. "The government has all the conditions required to continue to comply with its obligations", he declared.

Tonela was not worried by a recent negative assessment from the Standard and Poors rating agency. That assessment, he said, "was based on a retroactive framework, above all in the initial months of the year, when the impact of the wage reform implemented by the State last year, was very large from the financial point of view".

To solve this problem, the government took a series of measures, notably through a recent amendment to the law establishing the new Single Wage Table (TSU) for the public administration which, he believes, "will put the State accounts back on the rails in accordance with the projections made, and with the budget for this year".

Tonela was optimistic about the prospects for State revenue from the country's natural gas reserves. He believed that, over the next 25 years, the state will earn an average of US$750 million a year from the gas. In the early years, he said, revenue from gas would be US$100 million a year, but would then rise gradually, until it reached about a billion dollars a year.

Tonela also forecast that economic growth this year will reach five per cent, and could reach seven per cent a year over the next two years.