An audit of the Bank of Mozambique’s (BoM) accounts for the 2024 financial year has revealed that the State has failed to recognize, since 2005, the balances resulting from foreign exchange fluctuations owed to the institution, accumulating a total amount exceeding 115.3 billion meticais (approximately $1.5 billion), according to the audit firm Forvis Mazars, as reported by the Lusa news agency.
This finding appears in the “Basis for Qualified Opinion” section of the independent auditor’s report accompanying the central bank’s financial statements, dated June 30, 2025. The document highlights that this omission violates Law No. 1/92 of January 3 — the Organic Law of the Bank of Mozambique — whose Article 14 stipulates that losses arising from exchange rate fluctuations must be recognized by the State, which is then required to issue public debt securities in favor of the issuing bank.
“We found that the State has not fulfilled its obligations since the 2005 financial year, accumulating an amount of 115.4 billion meticais (approximately $1.5 billion), measured as of December 31, 2024,” the report states. Additionally, the auditor notes that the central bank also failed to record the interest and income associated with this debt in its individual and consolidated accounts. This amount reached 27.6 billion meticais (around $367 million) as of the same date, further worsening the institution’s financial position.
The Bank of Mozambique ended 2024 with a loss of 4.1 billion meticais (approximately $54.9 million), significantly revising downward the profits initially reported for 2023. The revised result for 2023 stood at 886.2 million meticais ($11.7 million), well below the nearly 2.3 billion meticais ($30.9 million) previously recorded. The report explains that in 2024, a system anomaly was identified in the bank’s IT system related to the accounting of exchange rate variations on the maturity of term deposit and overnight interbank loan operations from previous years up to 2023. The bank made the necessary adjustments, which led to the retrospective restatement of the 2023 accounts.
At the end of 2024, the total assets of the Bank of Mozambique amounted to 759.2 billion meticais ($10 billion), while total liabilities stood at 754.1 billion meticais ($9.9 billion), resulting in equity of 5 billion meticais ($67.1 million).
Source: Lusa
