Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican branch of the South African Standard Bank believes that the resumption of natural gas liquefaction projects in the northern province of Cabo Delgado will improve the country’s business confidence and foreign exchange inflows.
The French oil and gas company, TotalEnergies, heads the Mozambique LNG Project, located on the Afungi peninsula, in Palma district. The project, which is budgeted at about 20 billion dollars, was forced to halt operations in 2021 following a major terrorist attack against Palma town. However, the company is now preparing to resume the project, as the security conditions have improved.
“The resumption of natural gas projects and stable performance in sectors such as mining and coal could improve business confidence and foreign exchange inflows”, reads the bank’s financial statement for the first half of this year.
According to the document, there are expectations of a gradual economic recovery, with a forecast growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) “of between 0.5 per cent and 0.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2025 and between two per cent and three per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025.”
However, the bank claims that its profits in the first half of this year fell by almost 11 per cent to 3.507 billion meticais (54.8 million dollars at the current exchange rate) amid weak consumer demand and low investment.
In 2024, the bank’s profit had already fallen by 15 percent compared to 2023, to 6.134 billion meticais “and this was the lowest profit in three years, down from 7.191 billion meticais in 2023 and 6.842 billion meticais in 2022.”
According to the note, the country’s economy faced significant challenges in 2024 and 2025, including weak consumer demand, limited investment, post-election violence in the fourth quarter of 2024 (which caused destruction of infrastructure and disruption to commercial operations), and adverse weather conditions.
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