Mozambique grows 3.8% this year
Standard Bank’s economic analysis unit estimates that Mozambique’s economy will grow by 3.8 percent this year and slow to 3.5 percent next year due to a lack of agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“We have lowered our GDP growth prospects from 4.1 to 3.8 percent this year, and from 5.7 to 3.5 percent next year,” the South African bank analysts write in a report on African economies.
In the document, which was sent to investors and to which Lusa has access, the South African bank research department says that forecast downgrade “reflects our expectations that an IMF-financed economic adjustment programme will not be implemented quickly enough to ensure the return of positive investor sentiment and donor support”.
For Standard Bank, “an IMF-funded programme would accelerate the return to macroeconomic stability,” but this assumption seems unlikely, at least given the statements made by the director of the IMF’s African department to the Mozambican media.
During the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Washington, Selassie said that no financial assistance programme is planned for this and next year and reinforced the need for more information on the country’s ‘hidden debt’.
In the part of the report on Mozambique, Standard Bank writes that the increase in coal production should sustain economic growth and that the next two years should be “politically busy” with municipal elections in October 2018 and presidential and legislative elections one year later.
Reference: #Source: Lusa Club of Mozambique