José de Lima Massano referred, in the first edition of the Angola Economic Outlook 2023, that the National Bank of Angola (BNA) issued a rule establishing a maximum period of 45 days for approval of commercial bank operations, which has been respected by banks commercials.
"What happens is that the promoters of entrepreneurial initiatives that need resources, on the thirtieth day the bank says that this piece is missing and starts counting again", he explained.
An example of this reality, quoted José de Lima Massano, is what happens with the Deutsch Bank credit line, which has not approved Angolan projects for years.
"We have here a good reference of the seriousness with which we have to take these credit processes, which happens with the famous Deutsch Bank line. How many operations have we financed in this way? Because we have not been able to gather the necessary pieces for effective approval, [for] years, and we are saying that our commercial banks have to respond within 45 days", he stressed.
According to José de Lima Massano, what the BNA verifies in its supervisory actions "is that the banks, in general, comply with the 45 days".
"What is happening is that the quality of information really needs to be improved, this is the main complaint we have from commercial banks, the quality of information that is presented for projects that need funding", he stressed.
For her part, the main Program Officer at the AfDB, Yolanda Arcelina, referred that in a portfolio of 1.2 billion dollars, around 60 percent to 70 percent of this value is for services, works and the purchase of goods, but what is noted is that "the Angolan business community is not present".
"The number of proposals we receive from national companies is very small and the quality of the proposals, even to compete for these funding opportunities that we have for works and other services, the quality of the documents is very low", he underlined.
Yolanda Arcelina said that they started to work on this aspect, through information, "a process of mutual knowledge".
"On the one hand, at the bank, to get to know the Angolan market better, but also so that, in general, the bank is better known, what are the rules with which we operate and mainly so that there are more partnerships between the local public sector and the international one so that they can compete on an equal footing", she emphasized.
