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Without any fanfare from either party, it was recently revealed that Mozambique cleared its entire $701 million debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The news comes as a meeting between the officials and the IMF was scheduled for August, which it had previously been presumed would include discussions about the outstanding debt becoming distressed.
Such a state would put billions in additional debts, current and future, for vital gas and infrastructure projects, at risk according to the World Bank.
Business Insider Africa reports that without any announcement, in the final days of march the IMF website updated Mozambique’s outstanding debt level to zero, while Fáusio Mussá, chief economist at Standard Bank in Mozambique, the local branch of Africa’s largest continental bank, disclosed that the country had settled.
The news makes Mozambique the latest in a small series of African country to get out from under internationally-held, aid-related debt.
The southeast African nation had built up all-time record foreign currency reserves of $4.15 billion, which have been reduced to $3.5 billion following the repayment.
The country ranks among the least-developed in the world along multiple lines of standard measurement, such as life expectancy and GDP-per-capita. It had been ravaged by a civil war until 1994 when it held its first multiparty elections had has remained mostly stable since.
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Namibia and Nigeria are two other countries to have recently paid off large amounts of IMF debt. In October of last year, Namibia paid off $750 million to make it the second-lowest debtor to the organization in Africa, while in May, Nigeria paid back a $3.4 billion loan to cushion the impact from its government-mandated business closures and lockdowns while attempting to reduce the impact of COVID-19.
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