Nyusi met with Marcelo and may visit Portugal

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Nyusi met with Marcelo and may visit Portugal

7:47 CAT | 22 Sep 2016

Notícias / Presidente Filipe Nyusi greets Portuguese president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa before their meeting in New York. The Foreign Affairs ministers of Mozambique, Oldemiro Balói, (left) and of Portugal, Augusto Santos Silva (right)

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Tuesday met his Portuguese counterpart, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. The latter said he hoped all would go well in Mozambique, in terms both of “national reconciliation” (a reference to the current talks with the rebel movement Renamo), and the resumption of financial aid by the partners who used to provide direct support to the Mozambican state budget.

Portugal is one of the 14 donors and financial institutions that provided direct budget support. This aid was suspended after the discovery, in April, that over a billion dollars worth of government-guaranteed loans had not been disclosed, either to the Mozambican public or to the country’s international partners.

The two undisclosed loans were granted by Credit Suisse and the Russian bank VTB to the security-related companies Proindicus and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management) in 2013-2014, under the previous government, headed by Nyusi’s predecessor, Armando Guebuza. Together with the government-guaranteed loan of 850 million dollars to the Mozambique Tuna Company (EMATUM), these added 20 per cent to Mozambique’s foreign debt burden.

Following Nyusi’s meeting in Washington last week, with Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an IMF mission will now visit Mozambique to discuss, with the Attorney-General’s Office, the terms of reference for an independent audit of these loans, to establish exactly what the money was used for.

One of the results of the meeting with Rebelo de Sousa, is that Nyusi has been invited to visit Portugal.

Source: AIM