Washington, Feb. 19, 2026 (Lusa) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated, upon approval of the third review of the unfunded technical programme, that any financing programme for Equatorial Guinea will only come after a report on transparency in the hydrocarbons sector.
"The authorities are making progress towards establishing a track record of IMF financial assistance," but "the establishment of a satisfactory track record continues to depend on the implementation of governance reforms by the authorities, in particular the publication of a transparency report on the hydrocarbon sector, work on which has already begun," reads the report on the approval of the third review of the programme monitored by technicians (SMP).
At issue is the Equatorial Guinea government's refusal last year to publish a report on the assets of public sector leaders, after which the IMF opted to require a report on transparency in the oil sector.
When questioned by Lusa on this issue, the Fund simply said that it "is supporting the authorities in their reform efforts under the SMP, which still has a review pending," adding that "after the successful conclusion of the SMP, the Fund team may collaborate with the authorities on the details of any subsequent financing agreement."
This unfunded programme was designed to support the authorities' reforms to adjust the economy to the structural reduction in hydrocarbon production on 16 December last year.
The African country's economic activity is expected to have contracted by 6.4% in 2025 due to a large drop in hydrocarbon production, after a small positive growth in 2024, and the outlook remains negative, the Fund says.
"The economy is expected to shrink slightly in the medium term as hydrocarbon production continues to decline," reads the report, which notes a decline in inflation from a peak of 3.5% in March 2023 to 2.6% in October 2025.
Public debt rose from 36.4% of GDP in 2024 to 39.2% of GDP at the end of 2025, the year in which "substantial reforms" were implemented in the context of the programme supported by the Fund's technicians.
"Fiscal policy in 2025 was in line with their plans to stabilise public debt dynamics and restore external balance, and was supported by impactful structural fiscal measures to improve tax and customs administration," says the IMF, concluding that "the authorities also continued to prioritise social spending, eliminated fees for students to travel on public school buses, and worked to obtain regional regulatory approval for their plan to settle domestic arrears."
In December 2019, Equatorial Guinea signed an Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme that said the country would receive $282.8 million (€240 million) in exchange for structural reforms and the fight against corruption.
Of this amount, only an initial tranche of $40 million (€34 million) was delivered in December of that year, with the programme being suspended the following year during the pandemic.
In 2021, the director of the IMF's African department, Abebe Aemro Selassie, told Lusa that "the government's weak implementation capacity was exacerbated by the pandemic, making it very difficult to provide capacity building, audits, and other exercises necessary to continue improving public finance management."
Since 2014, Equatorial Guinea has been a member of the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries, whose founding states are Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Príncipe, and Timor-Leste.
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