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A year after Mozambique stunned investors by announcing a debt restructuring, talks with bondholders and the International Monetary Fund have led nowhere.

The gas-rich southern African nation has yet to start formal discussions, either with the investors who bought its $727 million of Eurobonds — which the government defaulted on in January — or the banks that provided about $1,4 billion of loans to two state companies. At least one local analyst who’s worked on previous sovereign restructurings in Africa says talks might not start until 2020. The impasse comes as bondholders wait for Mozambique to start negotiations with the IMF for a bailout program. Exotix Capital says the IMF probably won’t budge, though, until the government comes clean about the state-guaranteed loans, which were taken on in secret in 2013 and 2014 and have partially gone missing, according to an independent audit.

“We’re in this state of quasi-suspension,” said Stuart Culverhouse, the head of sovereign research at Exotix in London, who met IMF officials this month at the lender’s Annual Meetings in Washington. “Nothing has been able to move forward. The IMF wants to help the country. But it can’t just reward bad behaviour.” Mozambique had hoped to reach a restructuring agreement by January this year and wanted to negotiate with private creditors as one group, whether they owned the bonds or the loans made to ProIndicus, a security company, and Mozambique Asset Management. But the bondholders insisted that they be treated differently and that the only instruments to get haircuts should be the loans, given that their legality has been questioned by Mozambique’s attorney-general. Twelve months on, their stance hasn’t changed. They believe the country, one of the world’s 10 poorest, will have the means to pay them back once its 5-year plan to export liquefied natural gas gets underway.

Mozambique’s finances have been bolstered since the default by higher prices for coal and aluminium exports. That, along with tight monetary policy that’s enticing yield hunters, has made the metical the world’s second-best performing currency this year and lessened the burden of the government’s external debts. The sovereign debt restructuring “has proved to be unworkable” because the government “sought to bundle the legitimate claims of the Eurobond holders together with the evidently suspect claims against certain state-sponsored companies,” the Mozambique Bondholders said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Mozambique is clearly not in medium-term debt distress.” GGMB was set up last year by investors holding the bulk of the bonds, including Franklin Templeton and New York-based hedge funds Greylock Capital Management LLC and NWI Management LP.

The securities, due in 2023, have been among the best performing sovereign notes in emerging markets this year, with their price rallying 29 percent. They fell 0,4 cents to 76,4 cents on the dollar as of 2:28pm in London, up from a low of 50 shortly before the default. Neither the finance ministry nor its advisers — Lazard Ltd and law firm White & Case — responded to emails seeking comment. Bond investors want to know “the full and true financial picture of the country,’’ said Lutz Roehmeyer, a money manager at Landesbank Berlin Investment GmbH, which oversees $14 billion of assets, including Mozambican debt. — Bloomberg.