Mozambique: Interest rate cut will have no impact, say Mozambican economists and businesspeople
Maputo. [Photo: Macauhub]
Mozambique’s public debt portfolio is evolving into a higher-risk scenario, with faster payments and higher interest rates, the country’s ministry of finance announced on Thursday in a tax risk report.
“The debt portfolio is rapidly changing to a higher risk scenario, with lower maturity (four years) and higher interest rates (18%),” the document said.
The 34-page report reviewed the main risks to the economic evolution of the country, even before cyclones Idai and Kenneth killed hundreds of people in the central and northern areas of the country, aggravating the economic data and forecasts of this report from December and published on Thursday.
“The public debt, including guarantees, presents a growth trajectory above the recommended sustainability indicators for low-income countries,” the document said, which showed that” in the last four years, this has risen from 94.9% of GDP [gross domestic product] in 2015 to 127.2% in 2016, 101% in 2017 and 107% in 2018″ and that the cost of supporting debt has grown four times.
“In the last three years the debt service – interest and amortisation – grew from 3.6% to 12.6% of GDP between 2015 and 2018,” the executive added, explaining that “the significant drop in the debt ratio compared to GDP between 2016 and 2017 corresponded to the combined effect of exchange depreciation of the metical and the overestimation of the debt stock that year, which had the implementation of the project of the ENH (Coral project), which was postponed for subsequent years.”
These data, the ministry of finance said, set up “a risk that requires constant monitoring in 2019,” alerting, lastly, to the “concentration of payments in specific periods which can pressure the public treasury” in this and the next year.
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