{"id":99340,"date":"2026-04-08T16:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T16:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data"},"modified":"2026-04-08T17:42:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T17:42:55","slug":"mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data","title":{"rendered":"Mozambique Minister Critiques World Bank’s Outdated Data"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

What You Need to Know<\/h4>\n

Mozambican Finance Minister Carla Louveira has accused the World Bank of using outdated statistics in its recent report, which claims Mozambique is the second poorest country globally. Louveira argues that the data is from 2019 and does not reflect the current situation, emphasizing the need for more recent figures to accurately assess poverty in Mozambique.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Africa-Press – Mozambique. <\/strong> <\/span>Mozambican Finance Minister Carla Louveira has accused the World Bank of using outdated statistics in its latest report on Mozambique.<\/p>\n

The report, entitled \u201cMozambique Economic Update: From Fragility to Stability<\/b>\u201d, published in March, claims that Mozambique is \u201cthe second poorest country and among the ten most unequal in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

As the World Bank must have expected, this has led to a spate of media headlines, announcing that Mozambique is \u201cthe second poorest country\u201d on the planet.<\/p>\n

This is obviously untrue. Anyone who accepts the World Bank claim would have us believe that Mozambique is poorer than such war-torn hellholes as Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan or South Sudan.<\/p>\n

This is far from the first time that the World Bank has spread falsehoods about Mozambique. In the late 1990s, for example, the Bank was at the forefront of an ideologically driven campaign to dismantle the cashew processing industry, using fraudulent statistics which made the extraordinary claim that processed cashew nuts were worth less than the unprocessed nuts.<\/p>\n

Today, in an equally shoddy exercise, the World Bank bases its claims about Mozambican poverty on figures that are years out of date. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of Tuesday\u2019s Maputo celebrations of Mozambican Women\u2019s Day, Louveira said that, although the report bears the date March 2026, the data come from 2019.<\/p>\n

Mozambican government has broader definition of what it calls \u201cmulti-dimensional poverty\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThe statistics used were collected in the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, and were published in 2022\u201d, said Louveira.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the World Bank report only looked at \u201cconsumption poverty\u201d, assessing whether households had enough money to acquire a \u201cbasic basket\u201d of goods and services, whereas the Mozambican government has a broader definition of what it calls \u201cmulti-dimensional poverty\u201d.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, noted the Minister, the time line used by the World Bank for the Mozambican case was different from that used for various other countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many of these countries\u201d, said Louveira, \u201cthe comparative analysis was made with recent household surveys. If we were to use these more recent data, the picture of our country would obviously be different\u201d.<\/p>\n

IMF repayment<\/b><\/p>\n

Asked how the government had managed to pay off, in advance, its entire debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Louveira stressed that it had not used the State Budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur country has net international reserves available\u201d, she stressed, and the government paid off the debt to the IMF by dipping into those reserves.<\/p>\n

There was no risk of exhausting the reserves, which were still sufficient to pay for four to five months\u2019 imports of goods and services. Paying the debt to the IMF would only have \u201ca slight impact\u201d, she insisted.<\/p>\n

The debt paid was 515.04 million Special Drawing Rights (equivalent to 603.1 million dollars).<\/p>\n

The World Bank has faced criticism in the past for its assessments of Mozambique’s economic situation. In the late 1990s, it was involved in controversial decisions regarding the cashew processing industry, claiming that processed nuts were less valuable than unprocessed ones based on flawed statistics. This history of contentious reporting has led to skepticism about the Bank’s current claims regarding poverty in Mozambique, particularly as the country navigates its economic recovery post-COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Find more news and analyses on Mozambique<\/span> on the Africa Press<\/span> website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What You Need to Know Mozambican Finance Minister Carla Louveira has accused the World Bank of using outdated statistics in its recent report, which claims Mozambique is the second poorest country globally. Louveira argues that the data is from 2019 and does not reflect the current situation, emphasizing the need for more recent figures to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":99339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[508,283,1158,8629,422],"class_list":["post-99340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-economy","tag-imf","tag-mozambique","tag-poverty","tag-statistics","tag-world-bank"],"yoast_head":"\nMozambique Minister Critiques World Bank's Outdated Data - Mozambique<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mozambique's Finance Minister criticizes the World Bank for using outdated statistics in its economic report on the country.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mozambique Minister Critiques World Bank's Outdated Data\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mozambique's Finance Minister criticizes the World Bank for using outdated statistics in its economic report on the country.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mozambique\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-04-08T16:56:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-04-08T17:42:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/sites\/64\/2026\/04\/sm_1775669415.023253.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Mozambique Minister Critiques World Bank’s Outdated Data\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-04-08T16:56:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-04-08T17:42:55+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data\"},\"wordCount\":607,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/sites\/64\/2026\/04\/sm_1775669415.023253.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"IMF\",\"Mozambique\",\"Poverty\",\"statistics\",\"World Bank\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"economy\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-minister-critiques-world-banks-outdated-data\",\"name\":\"Mozambique Minister Critiques World Bank's Outdated Data - 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