July 2026 external file: two goods balances inside one deficit, and who funds the gap

July 31, 2026

Wordless fine-line illustration: Two scales on one harbour table: a heavy weighing pan of ore and gas cylinders sinking on the left, a wide pan of containers, drums and sacks rising on the right, with a single banker's ledger balanced across the beam

Splitting the Banco de Moçambique’s July tables into project and non-project economies shows where the dollar pressure sits.

Mozambique’s external file for July 2026 is easiest to read as two economies with opposite balances. In the second quarter the large projects ran a goods surplus of about US$1,153m, and everything outside them ran a deficit of about US$1,473m, 70% wider than in the first quarter. Both figures are our subtraction from tables in the Banco de Moçambique (BdM) August summary, which prints exports and imports with and without the projects but not the balances.

The aggregate hides this. Total goods exports of US$1,894.5m against imports of US$2,214.1m leave a gap of US$319.6m, and a reader who stops there sees a moderate shortfall. The other four instruments in the file, reserves and cover, the financing table, the price of dollars and the IMF’s structural view, show who is paying for the larger gap underneath, and how long the payment can continue.

Two balances inside one deficit

The projects earn the dollars and the rest of the economy spends them.

Start with the projects. Their exports were US$1,471.0m in the first quarter and US$1,473.4m in the second, while their imports fell from US$693.7m to US$320.4m. The surplus therefore rose from about US$777m to about US$1,153m, a gain of 48%. Outside the projects, exports were US$382.1m and then US$421.0m, and imports US$1,248.0m and then US$1,893.7m. The balance moved from a deficit of about US$866m to about US$1,473m.

Netted together the two lines return the published US$319.6m gap, as the O Económico analysis of the quarter reports it. The gap is met from two different pockets: a project surplus that the operators earn, and an ordinary economy that must buy its dollars from banks. The tables do not say how much of the project surplus stays in the country, so the file cannot treat it as available to importers.

The reserves clock: a stock, a ratio and two bases

Net reserves of US$3,436.8m mean different things depending on the denominator.

The stock closed July at US$3,436.8m after falling US$27.0m in the month, and Diário Económico noted that it had fallen about US$821m since February, with the March settlement of US$698.6m to the IMF the largest single item. The footnote to the BdM table puts cover at 2.8 months on total imports and at 4.3 months once the large projects are removed.

The IMF’s February staff report used a third basis: gross reserves of about 6.5 months of non-megaproject imports at the end of 2025. Net and gross reserves differ, and the periods differ, so the three ratios cannot be chained together. Pick the one that matches your question. An ordinary importer’s question is the 4.3-month ratio. A lender pricing sovereign risk will look at gross reserves and debt service.

Financing: two-thirds of the second quarter’s FDI was loans

Direct investment fell 55.6% and what remained was mostly intra-group credit.

The BdM’s financing table records foreign direct investment of US$1,328.4m in the first quarter and US$590.0m in the second. In the second quarter only US$191.5m came as equity. The other US$398.5m, 67.5% of the total, was ‘other capital’, meaning shareholder loans and trade credit, and US$355.7m of that went to the large projects.

Credit from a parent is investment on the day it arrives and a liability afterwards. For the file the point is that the largest financing line is debt-like and aimed at the projects, while the ordinary economy runs the larger deficit. The IMF expects the megaprojects’ own imports to be self-financed and puts LNG production from 2030 onwards, so the projects are in construction, not production.

The price of dollars: the street premium

At 31 July exchange houses sold dollars about 9.7% above the banks.

The BdM table for 31 July shows the reference rate at 63.27 buying and 64.54 selling, commercial banks at 63.33 and 64.59, and exchange houses at 69.34 and 70.86. The houses’ selling rate sits 9.7% above the banks’, by our arithmetic. For comparison, the IMF’s staff report put the parallel-market premium for the dollar at roughly 14% in late 2025 and below 10% a year before, and suggested that firms’ longer waits for foreign currency may reflect weaker export and aid inflows.

The two measures are not the same series, one being the IMF’s parallel rate and the other an exchange-house quote against a bank quote, so a fall from 14% to 9.7% is not a clean trend. It is a hint that the street price eased while the official rate stood still, and the tables do not say whether supply improved or demand was held back. A business must decide which reading it prices into its contracts, and keep a margin for the other.

Building the file and keeping it current

Five rows, updated on the bank’s own calendar.

Keep five rows and refresh each on its release. Row one is the project balance and row two the non-project balance, each from the quarterly goods table. Row three is net reserves with the two cover ratios and their stated bases. Row four is foreign direct investment split into equity and other capital. Row five is the bank selling rate against the exchange-house rate. Every row should carry its source month and its publication date, since the quarterly tables run about two months behind the monthly ledger.

A finance director can then act on a short rule. When row two widens while row three falls, tighten dollar cover and bring forward orders. When row four turns toward equity, expect the project side to need fewer imports from the ordinary economy’s pool. The next dated entry is the BdM’s September summary, which will give the August ledger.