In the third quarter of last year, Mozambique recorded a negative variation of 1.7% in imports of goods, totaling 6.4 billion dollars compared to 6.5 billion dollars in the same period of 2023..

The data is contained in the quarterly Balance of Payments (BoP) bulletin released by the Bank of Mozambique (BoM), to which MZNews had access. According to the document, the reduction in imports from the Major Projects (GP) was essentially due to the fall in imports of goods from both the Major Projects (GP) and the traditional economy by 4.9% and 1.2%, respectively.

According to the BoM, in terms of categories of goods, including GPs, the highlight goes to intermediate goods, which cost the country 1.9 billion dollars, representing a weight of 38.8% over total imports, although these have seen an annual reduction of 15%.

"The main contributors to the worsening were expenditure on the purchase of raw aluminium (53%), fertilizers (36%), construction materials (excluding cement) (13%) and fuel (8%)," the document points out.

Consumer goods, meanwhile, with a weight of 25% on the total import bill, saw annual growth of 1%, reaching 1.6 billion dollars, influenced by the increase in spending on the following products: rice and school books with 63% and 38%, respectively.

Meanwhile, Capital Goods, which accounted for 18% of the total bill, contracted by 5.5% over the year to a total of 1.1 billion dollars, influenced by a 45 million dollar reduction in the purchase of miscellaneous machinery.

South Africa was the main country of origin of Mozambican imports, accounting for 25% of the total, which corresponds to 1.6 billion dollars, followed by China, India, Singapore and Oman, with 17%, 7%, 6% and 5% of the country's total spending, respectively.

(Photo DR)