The CTA has invited all companies with import invoices that have been unpaid for more than three months to submit copies of these documents to its offices so that they can be forwarded to the Bank of Mozambique for payment
The Confederation of Mozambican Business Associations (CTA), the country’s main business organization, insists that there is a shortage of foreign currency on the national market and this may lead to the bankruptcy of some companies.
The CTA’s position contradicts the Bank of Mozambique, the regulator of the national financial system, which recently claimed that there is enough foreign currency to satisfy market demand.
According to the CTA chairperson, Agostinho Vuma, speaking to reporters on Thursday, in Maputo, the lack of foreign currency on the national market may also contribute to an increase in inflation.
Vuma presented documents pointing to the lack of liquidity in currency from commercial banks to customers, as well as a list of companies whose invoices were submitted to commercial banks for payment but not satisfied.
He explained that the values of this list, submitted to the Bank of Mozambique, come to 402 million dollars over the third quarter of 2024.
“The CTA hereby reacts to the central bank’s position because it considers it to be insensitive to the problems that companies, as the drivers of the economy, have been facing. In the routine dialogue meetings with the Bank of Mozambique, the CTA took 15 representatives of the most affected companies to a working meeting with the financial system regulator to work on finding the reasons behind the problem. However, the regulator has never presented a straight answer”, he said.
According to Vuma, in the same period in which the commercial banks net purchases from their clients increased, the banks’ net foreign assets tended to decrease.
“From November 2023 to 2024 they fell by 12.8 percent. When the same analysis is carried out over two years, the reduction is more pronounced, at 47.5 percent. The sector most affected, excluding fuel, is manufacturing industry, particularly due to the import of raw materials and equipment”, he said.
“Then follows the tourism sector, because international airlines have suspended ticketing in some agencies from Mozambique as a result of difficulties in repatriating the respective revenue, which must always be the dollar equivalent”, he added.
The chairperson believes that it doesn’t make sense when the central bank insists that there are no foreign currency liquidity problems.
Therefore, the CTA has invited all companies with import invoices that have been unpaid for more than three months to submit copies of these documents to its offices so that they can be forwarded to the Bank of Mozambique for payment.
Source: AIM
