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Mozambique Finance Minister Max Tonela unveiled a long-awaited bill to govern a planned sovereign wealth fund overseeing revenues from what the state expects will amount to $91.7 billion in natural-gas exports in the coming decades.
The proposed law sees 40% of state revenues from liquefied natural-gas exports going to the fund for the first 15 years, with the rest allocated to the national budget. After that, the money will be split evenly between savings and annual spending, Tonela told lawmakers Wednesday.
Government earnings from the projects already approved — including a $7 billion offshore platform that started exporting a year ago, and a $20 billion onshore plan that’s currently frozen due to an Islamic State-linked insurgency in the area — will peak at more than $6 billion annually in the 2040s, Tonela said. The central bank will be the operational manager of the fund.
The revenues will be crucial in helping Mozambique repay a $900 million bond that starts maturing from March 2028.
The creation on the wealth fund for one of the world’s poorest nations was a key requirement of the International Monetary Fund, which last year agreed to a $456 million economic program with Mozambique last year.
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