Maputo, Mozambique, 24 October – The Mozambican economy is expected to post growth of around 7.25 percent this year and 7.5 percent in 2012, the resident representative of the International Monetary fund (IMF) in Mozambique, Victor Lledó said Friday in Maputo.

Cited by the Mozambican and international press, Lledó said that Mozambique had shown flexibility in the face of projected global economic cooling, and in the medium term the country’s economy would speed up its growth driven by strong public investment and the activities of large mining projects.

Inflation feel sharply, from 16.5 percent at the end of 2010 to less than 8 percent at the end of September, 2011, Lledó said, reflecting favourable international prices, a good harvest, string currency and, most importantly, “prudent monetary and fiscal policies.”

On the same occasion the resident representative of the IMF called for Mozambique to be more efficient in taxing multinational companies involved in mining its natural resources, in order to generate economic and social benefits for the country.

Lledó described the tax conditions Mozambique had offered the first large projects to be set up in the country as “generous” and thus called for the need to change the tax paradigm in relation to multinational companies.

“The position of the (International Monetary) Fund, in general, in relation to large projects in the areas of mining and natural resources is that these projects need to make an economic and social contribution,” Lledó said. (macauhub)