The former Mozambican Minister of Planning and Finance, Luísa Diogo, said that the former Minister of Economy and Finance, Manuel Chang, was aware of the indebtedness strategy adopted by Mozambique, which did not contemplate/ included commercial debts.

For the "good" of the Mozambican nation, Manuel Chang should have refused to contract the commercial debt, before the former President of the Republic, Armando Emílio Guebuza.

"I had to say no to the head of state, several times, and I didn't have any problems. It was an opportunity for the Finance Minister [Manuel Chang], because without his signature nothing would move forward," he said in an interview with a weekly newspaper.

She was thus answering the question about the origin of the Hidden Debts, and Armando Guebuza's government, once at the end of its mandate, wanted to leave the Executive with its pockets full.

According to the member of the Frelimo party, there was no reason to incur a debt of two billion dollars, since the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is around 14 billion dollars. But also because "the Governor of the Bank of Mozambique [BM] cannot alone put the country into debt by two billion dollars.

"This [the WB Governor] signs as second, but the owner of the treasury, the one who looks after the public treasury, is the Minister of Finance," explained Luísa Diogo.

The former minister said she could not recall ever knowing of a plan to take on $2 billion in debt, because it was too much, to be paid off in 15 years.

She further explained that the country has a very clear debt strategy "both from the standpoint of what kind of debt we could do and from the standpoint of how much debt we can do."

Knowing these rules, "the state should never get commercial debt, because that is for companies, they produce faster, they collect money faster, while the state doesn't, because the state recovers its investments through taxes. It's not possible, as a state, to get into debt from a commercial point of view. There was a failure here," he remarked.

For the career economist, one of two things is true: "either there was no courage [to refuse the debt contraction] or else it was the enthusiasm that the gas would come out in 2018, but we knew that the payment had to start earlier."