Vera Daves de Sousa, in an interview with Rádio Nacional de Angola, said that the exact amount of the debt varies a lot depending on the exchange rate, because there are debts in kwanzas, some indexed to the exchange rate, and debt in foreign currency.
"So the performance of the dollar / kwanza exchange rate immediately changes the value, in the debt that is indexed to the exchange rate, and this causes the numbers to vary, but it is around 67 billion dollars" , she stressed.
According to Vera Daves de Sousa, Angola's biggest creditor remains China, with a debt of 20 billion dollars, a figure that the government hopes to start reducing.
"We are going to start over and then the value of this debt will progressively start to reduce and then the weights will change as a result of this amortization", she pointed out.
The official also mentioned "interesting weight [of the debt] of the United Kingdom" and also with the internal market, "which is reducing", a fact verified year after year, as the debt is due, the State "mobilizes less".
"When a treasury bond or treasury bill comes due, we pay the creditors and when we go to the market to make new issues we borrow less than we pay, so that the net debt is lower, compared to what it has been in past years, so that the level of exposure of local banks to government bonds has also been reduced in this way", she informed.
The finance minister also mentioned that in addition to the financial public debt, which results from financing agreements with banks, international financial organizations or treasury bonds, treasury bills, there is commercial public debt.
Regarding this second group, the minister said that they have encouraged and motivated public managers, budget units, to ensure that it does not appear, encouraging respect for the rules of budget execution, as well as encouraging companies that accept to provide services or deliver goods on the basis of a contract without proving that the contract is intended, without proving that the expenditure is budgeted, to avoid this practice.
"We have set aside 450 billion kwanzas to deal with this 2013-2018 debt, in the 2022 State Budget, and everything outside that time window must be dealt with by the budget units themselves with their budget for the current year," he said. Is it over there.
The Angolan official admitted that there had been some "budgetary indiscipline" in the past.
"If there had been discipline, we would not be in this situation, because all operations that were carried out in compliance with the budget execution rules and that carried over from one year to another, such as withdrawal orders, outstanding payments, all, by 2020, are paid" . However, "we now have some that moved from 2021 to 2022, which are undergoing treatment, but from 2020 onwards, everything is paid for, so that those who respected the rules have no problems, all claimants result from situations that involve disrespect for budget execution rules", she stressed.
Vera Daves de Sousa said that all States finance themselves, and it is now important to continue to manage this indebtedness, but "in a rational and prudent way".
"In order to seek the least expensive financial solutions possible and in order to ensure that these resources that are being mobilized serve projects that will add value to the economy and that will help the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] to grow, in these two ways, because indebtedness is normal and we have been noticing that year after year the gross financing needs decrease", she added.
"In net terms, if we were to remove these amortization commitments - we are indebted to 500 or so billion kwanzas - these are the net financing needs. So, the bulk is, basically, to refinance ourselves, using different alternatives, multilateral financing, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the French Development Agency, financing from financial institutions, commercial financing, with the best possible conditions," she said.
