The information was released today by the Secretary of State for Finance and Treasury, Ottoniel dos Santos, at the end of a balance sheet meeting of the ongoing privatization program for companies and state assets.
Propriv, run by the State Asset Management and Participation Institute (IGAPE), started in 2019, with a total of 195 companies and assets for privatization, having been left with a total of 178 assets, after undergoing changes.
Ottoniel dos Santos said that, of the 567 billion kwanzas allocated, a total of 394 billion kwanzas have yet to be received contractually, with some installments already overdue, amounting to 15.1 million kwanzas.
According to the minister, 96 companies and assets have been privatized to date, leaving 82 assets, of which 27 are currently undergoing processes, 31 are pending and 25 are yet to be withdrawn from the privatization programme.
The Secretary of State for Finance and Treasury stressed that, with regard to the assets that are yet to be privatised, and which have their processes in progress, they will be developed throughout this first quarter, while the other processes should be adjusted.
“Here we are referring in particular to processes that depend on legal intervention, others, of some adjustment from the organizational point of view of the companies so that they can be privatized and finally formalize the withdrawal of 24 assets from Propriv. Twenty-four plus one, that today at the level of the meeting it was also decided to withdraw”, he stressed, without further details.
Regarding the new assets to be inserted, Ottoniel dos Santos advanced that there will initially be 68, including those that were still in progress in the first cycle and those that derive from the asset recovery processes, which the State wants to privatize, as well as surveys made by governments provincial and sectoral managers, who understand that certain assets can pass to the private sphere.
With the sale of companies and assets, a total of 2,747 jobs have already been secured, of which 1,462 are new and 1,285 previously existed, he added.
The government official also said that the extension of the program for another five years will be proposed, throughout the term of office, for two fundamental reasons: first, the set of processes of the cycle that now ends that have yet to be concluded and, second, due to the new assets that will be inserted in the program.
Ottoniel dos Santos said that, among the companies proposed to be withdrawn from Propriv, some have little capacity to attract the private sector and other companies should be liquidated.
He also made a positive assessment of Propriv taking into account the situation experienced in the last five years, marked by the covid-19 pandemic, the restructuring phase and reforms that Angola is implementing.
“Adding these two groups together [privatized assets and those that have ongoing processes] and taking into account the total assets that were about to be privatized, we foresee a percentage of 69 percent of program effectiveness. I think that for a first systematized experience - because Angola has already had other privatization processes (...) - given the circumstances I mentioned, the program is having a promising result”, he underlined.
