Mozambique’s Coming Natural Resource Boom Expectations, Vulnerabilities, and Policies for Successful Management

Mozambique is set to become a world-class natural resource exporter with projections indicating that it will experience rapid increases in windfall revenues over the next several decades and well beyond. While this is welcome news for a low-income country with a substantial proportion of the population below the poverty line, it foreshadows some economic management problems ahead. The main concern is the poor economic record of many other lowincome countries with large natural resource endowments. It is remarkable how often these countries have experienced inferior rates of growth compared with countries lacking such endowments. This pattern, known as the ―natural resource curse,‖ has been documented in empirical research across a wide sample of nations.