The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that the Mozambican government has banned the release of the technical report on the outlines of the financial assistance, which is usually released when the program is presented.

For observers in Maputo, this position comes as no surprise because the Mozambican government has recently shown a worsening lack of transparency.

The head of the IMF mission in Mozambique, quoted by Lusa, said that "the publication of technical reports is presumed, but voluntary, so ultimately the authorities can withhold their consent to the publication of a report on the country, and they have done so, which I admit is not very common".

For economist João Mosca, this has an explanation: in recent years, the Mozambican executive has shown a worsening lack of transparency, which is accompanied by a worsening of various mechanisms for restricting freedoms and even human rights, and he stresses that this is not only due to the war in Cabo Delgado.

He notes that in the government's Economic and Social Plan, in the budget chapter, there is a lot of lack of information of different kinds and not just in relation to military issues, "and so this is a phenomenon that is happening in Mozambique, including legal initiatives to restrict the rights of association, of civil society organizations, and society is concerned about this trend of recent times".

João Mosca says that the consequence of this is that the IMF is relieved of its responsibility to publish the report and leaves it up to the government to decide whether or not to publish the technical reports, which contain many aspects of an economic and financial nature, especially related to budgetary and monetary policy, which for some reason the Mozambican government does not want to publish.

"In Mozambique we are seeing a worsening of the budget situation, and an increase in spending on the Single Wage Scale (TSU), including the need for an amending budget; these are aspects that the Mozambican government wants to prevent from being published," said the economist.

According to the IMF, the document that the government has banned from being released generally includes a letter signed by the authorities, usually the head of government, the finance minister and the central bank governor, detailing the main reason for the request for financial assistance.

In practice, the letter is accompanied by an IMF report on the country's needs and another government document, in which the authorities present the economic situation and explain what they intend to do to solve the problem or difficulty that prompted the request for help from the IMF. Both documents are several dozen pages long and provide a detailed account of the country's financial situation.

"The authorities expressly didn't want it to be published in the way it was going to be, I can say that I don't think it's an economically important issue, it's more a matter of internal process and differences of views," said Álvaro Piris, refusing to say specifically what the problem was. (voaportugues)