The International Monetary Fund (IMF) may disburse financial support to Mozambique by mid-2022, perhaps at the end of the first half, according to assurances given Wednesday by a source at the fund in Mozambique.

The source, cited by lusa, advanced the possibility considering that the negotiations underway, since the beginning of the week, in virtual format, will be successfully concluded.

"If the negotiations are successfully concluded in the coming weeks, we believe that there could be an approval by the IMF Executive Board before the middle of the year," I mentioned.

The talks between Mozambique and the IMF aim to agree on "a new financing program - ECF (Extended Credit Facility)," the same source added, and "the agenda follows the need for discussions, and, for now, there is no specific date for conclusion.

The amounts that the Fund will be able to disburse to the country still remain unknown.

On the table and under discussion with Mozambique are "a series of reforms planned in the areas of natural resource management, governance, and improvements in the management of public finances.

"A Fund-supported program can help ease financial pressures in a context of economic recovery, support the authorities' agenda to reduce poverty and restore equitable and sustainable growth," the IMF said in December when it announced the talks for late January.

The IMF was one of the partners to suspend direct aid to Mozambique in 2016 following the discovery of the $2.7 billion hidden state debt scandal.

Financial injections into government coffers would then resume in the form of post-cyclone aid in 2019 and to address the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus in 2020.