The position was expressed this Monday by Ricardo de Abreu at the inauguration ceremony of new members of the boards of the Ports of Luanda and Lobito, the main ones in the country.
Ricardo de Abreu stressed that in times of the covid-19 pandemic and the challenges it brings, foreseeing an unprecedented economic crisis on a global scale, the changes made in the administrations of both companies "should not be seen as a simple exchange of some people for others".
"We want and we are betting on other frameworks, because we believe that we can already start taking the first steps towards a different and better future, inciting and inculcating effective leadership in these companies that ensure better organizations, better systems and methodologies of governance and greater transparency in the management of public affairs," he stressed.
The minister argued that companies should be managed with the purpose of giving more revenue and more profit to the State, its main shareholder, but also capable of creating value for all its stakeholders.
"We are one of those who believe that being a public company is not synonymous with inefficiency, bureaucracy, bad management practices, clientelism and material and human losses", he stressed.
Ricardo de Abreu argued that it is possible to have public companies that promote excellence, the continuous improvement of their processes with the use of information technologies and good practices of governance and compliance, with focused and winning teams in which the objective is the common good.
"To this end, management methods must be transparent and scrutinisable, both by supervisory bodies and by the competent bodies of the executive. We can no longer accept that our companies should be managed as if they were personal companies," he said.
He stressed that, from a legal point of view, public companies have duly established the management instruments, under which managers must guide their actions, in order to be "companies of excellence, of quality, comparable to large companies in the region or beyond, which produce services of excellence, with adequate and modern processes, with real teams and which make a transparent rendering of accounts and produce results".
"If by law the paradigm of accountability of public companies is established, I appeal to those now in office to strict compliance with the law. But above all, I reiterate the call for professional brio, the will to continuously improve the performance of each of these strategic companies for the country and for all Angolans," he said.
The holder of the Transport portfolio guided the two companies to update the Port Management Plans and Master Plans, as a guiding and indispensable instrument for the development of their activities, both in the context of present exploitation and in the potential for its development and growth, allowing the promotion of port activity in an organized, safe and sustainable way, from the environmental and community point of view, which surrounds the port areas.
He stressed that the Port of Luanda, the gateway to 80 percent of the country's imports, and the Port of Lobito, the gateway to support the economy in the central-south area of Angola and the main outlet for the production of the national 'hintherland' and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, is expected to "significantly improve its performance".
"It is often said that we are in a geostrategic region and that we may be the regional 'hub', due to our privileged geographical location, but from the statistical data available, we have to recognise that given the existing demand, we have to be able to move from the current level of 'feeders' to 'hub' points," he concluded.
