Mozambique Fuel Shortage Tied to Bank Guarantee Delays, Not Supply Deficit – Gov’t

The Mozambican government has assured citizens that the country has adequate fuel reserves, attributing recent fuel shortages at service stations to issues with distributor bank guarantees rather than a lack of supply.

Government spokesperson Inocêncio Impissa stated during a weekly press briefing in Maputo that the disruption is due to administrative and logistical problems involving fuel suppliers and their banks. “We have fuel available in Mozambique. The only thing missing is the fuel to reach the citizens, but for that, there is an intermediary—the suppliers,” he explained.

Fuel supply difficulties have persisted across several regions, including the capital, with long queues and intermittent availability of petrol and diesel. Despite these challenges, Impissa insisted that national reserves remain stable, with regular fuel shipments arriving at Mozambican ports and continuous offloading at terminals.

“The situation is more related to the bank guarantees required for distributors to lift the fuel from customs warehouses,” he added. “The government is monitoring the situation closely, but this is essentially a matter of coordination between distributors, banks, and customs authorities.”

The government emphasized that the role of the state is limited to facilitating product availability at the terminals, while the actual distribution remains a private sector transaction.

In a related development, the Bank of Mozambique has taken steps to ease foreign exchange pressures impacting the fuel sector. New regulatory measures now allow banks to convert 50%—up from 30%—of export earnings into local currency, and income from the re-export of oil products will now be fully converted. These policies aim to ease foreign currency shortages and improve credit availability to fuel suppliers.

Source: Lusa