The unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2020 fell 3.7 percent compared to the same period in 2019, estimated at around 30.6 percent, corresponding to 4.7 million unemployed in the country, officials announced Tuesday. -market.
"It is said that the unemployment rate has fallen and the Angolan National Institute of Statistics (INE) uses agriculture as the source of the generation of new jobs, well, it is likely because the State has been developing a set of public policies aimed at commercial or family farming ", said the secretary general of the National Union of Angolan Workers (UNTA) Manuel Viage.
Speaking to Lusa, the union leader said that "it is likely that this scenario is not found in urban areas, but in rural areas, where there are projects for the development of agricultural activity that have absorbed a greater workforce".
According to the director-general of the National Statistics Institute (INE), Chaney John, who presented the Employment Survey in Angola (IEA) for the fourth quarter of 2020, the unemployment rate fell 3.7 percent for both men and women , and there are more 824,813 people working, compared to the same quarter of 2019.
More than half of the jobs (56.1 percent) are in the agricultural, animal production, hunting, forestry and fishing sectors. The sector that employs the least is the sector of financial activities, real estate and consultancy with 0.6 percent.
For Manuel Viage, despite the statistical framework presented by INE, UNTA data, especially in the segment of services, industry and civil construction in the urban sector, have not changed and there has not even been an improvement in the supply of jobs.
"We do not feel, as unions, that there has been an improvement or greater offer of jobs that may influence the employment rate", he noted, also anticipating "greater difficulties" for workers in the economic year 2021.
In turn, the secretary general of the Central General of Independent and Free Trade Unions of Angola (CGSILA), Francisco Jacinto, says he is "stunned and indignant" with the recent data released by INE in the face of the "extremely complicated situation" in the country.
"We have more than 80 percent of micro and small companies closed in the country, we have so many others in big trouble to stay in the market, we even have big companies that are very weak in functioning and come to tell us that unemployment has reduced" he asked.
The CGSILA official also considered that foreign investment in Angola "is almost null, the country has been in an economic recession for more than four years", stressing that the INE data "are unreal" when, he stressed, the "productive sector" faces serious problems ".
"I think they are only given to whiten a situation that is extremely bad," he shot, calling for "greater seriousness and precision" from the authorities in the compilation and dissemination of statistical data.
