Ricardo de Abreu, who was speaking to the press on the sidelines of the swearing-in ceremony for the new members of the board of directors of the Ports of Luanda and Namibe, said that "the support that needs to be given to TAAG, whether from the view of its financial recovery, either from the point of view of its capitalization ".
The holder of the Transport portfolio stressed that TAAG is a strategic company for the country. "At this moment, the State has prepared a package of economic measures to support the business sector, be it public or private, we have been in dialogue with companies in the sector in order to ensure that they are able to access these resources", said Ricardo of Abreu.
The minister stressed that the transport sector is one of those "which has been most severely impacted by this pandemic (covid-19)". "We are talking at this point of having completed the first 30 days of the State of emergency and confinement, with mobility limitations for all people and obviously this results in a significant reduction in the revenues that were captured by the transport and logistics operators ", he stressed.
According to Ricardo de Abreu, it is necessary to find ways to support these companies, because their costs remain constant, from the point of view of human resources, from the point of view of fixed operating costs.
"And, yes, we need to use this support from the State (...) so that companies survive and there are no redundancies, there is not a transversal impact here also on the sector", he stressed.
According to a study on the "Economic Impact of Covid-19 and Opportunities for Transformation", prepared by the Ministry of Transport, nearly 98,000 workers in the public and private transport sector could lose their jobs.
According to the document, the state business sector represents 7 percent of jobs, the formal private sector 37 percent and the remaining 56 percent represent the informal sector, so the road sub-sector "will suffer the greatest impact in absolute terms".
For the ministerial body that oversees transport in Angola, despite the scenario that presents itself for the road sub-sector, "the structural impact and the relative reduction should be more significant in the civil aviation sub-sector".
The study points out that the civil aviation sub-sector has 5542 workers from the public and private business sector registered with social security, and from that universe it estimates a potential loss of 3048 jobs.
Among the mitigation measures, the Ministry of Transport defends the creation of an Investment Fund for the Development of Infrastructures based on "revenues from monetization of structural assets and premiums from operating concession contracts".
The ministerial department estimated, last Monday, that the sector is experiencing loss of revenues amounting to 1,000 million dollars, due to covid-19, and that companies need more than 200 million dollars for treasury.
