Good afternoon. The IMF delegation due in Maputo next week will arrive with a much gloomier view of Mozambique’s economy than the African Development Bank offered only days ago. The AfDB’s forecast of 2.1% growth in 2026 already looked optimistic after last year’s post-election disruption. The IMF’s new projection of just 0.5% now exposes how much of an outlier it was.
And Mozambique is not just arguing over a growth forecast. It is preparing for negotiations that it hopes will lead to a new IMF programme, at a moment when the government has little fiscal space, the external account is expected to deteriorate, and global conditions are turning less favourable. The IMF’s regional outlook points to pressure from higher oil and fertiliser prices, uncertainty linked to the Middle East, tighter financing conditions and falling aid. Mozambique is badly placed to absorb those shocks.
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That is partly because the economy has still not recovered properly from the political and social disruption that followed last year’s elections. Business confidence remains weak, imports linked to large projects can widen the current account deficit before they generate export earnings, and the state still faces heavy spending pressures. LNG may transform Mozambique’s balance of payments later, but it does not solve the immediate problem of weak growth, costly imports and strained public finances.
The politics may be even harder than the numbers. As the IMF mission approaches, public commentary is already turning against familiar Fund themes: public-sector wages, elite salaries (including that of the Bank of Mozambique governor), and fears of a possible metical devaluation. Some of those concerns are legitimate. Mozambique’s wage bill has been a structural problem for years, and public anger over high salaries at the top of the state is understandable in a country where services are weak and real incomes are under pressure.
