The Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique - CTA says that the Bank of Mozambique is ignoring the lack of foreign currency on the national market, evidence of which has already been presented.

According to the association's president, the Central Bank's stance is not very sensitive to the problems of companies as economic drivers and distributors of wealth.

"The volume corresponding to liquidity exchange operations between commercial banks on the Interbank Foreign Exchange Market (MCI), despite a slight recovery in the fourth quarter of 2024 in which it rose 88%, fell drastically when compared to the annual volumes of 2023 and 2022," said Agostinho Vuma, today in Maputo.

According to CTA calculations, the volume of foreign currency liquidity swap operations between commercial banks reached historic lows in the second quarter of 2024, with an estimated value of 5.5 million dollars.

Another figure to consider, which demonstrates a lack of liquidity, is that of commercial banks' operations with customers, where the aggregate volume of purchase and sale operations tended to increase from the first to the third quarter of 2024, growing by around 13%.

"Disaggregating the data, it can be seen that this growth in turnover resulted from the rapid increase in foreign currency purchases by commercial banks from their customers in 18% against a smaller growth of 7% in sales by commercial banks to their customers," he said.

Vuma said that the CTA had presented evidence to the Central Bank that foreign currency liquidity is not flowing from commercial banks to clients, as well as a list of companies with invoices submitted to commercial banks for payment and which have not been satisfied.

"The values of this list presented to the Bank of Mozambique were estimated at 402 million dollars in the third quarter of 2024," he noted.