"There has been an important effort on the part of the Angolan Government to deal with these situations, in essence, to reduce this impact and it is a job that we are continuously doing with the Angolan Ministry of Finance", said Fernando Medina to the press, on the sidelines of the visit he made to the Muxima Sanctuary project and the urban redevelopment of the village of Muxima, as part of a three-day visit to Angola, at the invitation of his Angolan counterpart, Vera Daves de Sousa.
According to the minister, the amount of the debt "varies every day", taking into account that "payments are made every day, and new debt for projects in execution enters daily".
"What I can say is that on our part there is tranquility regarding this matter, it is something that has been faced with a lot of frontality with the Angolan Government, in a very close relationship of trying to solve the problems and that is how we will continue", he stressed.
In turn, the Minister of Finance, Vera Daves, said that it is a continuous work done with all creditors, namely with those who followed the entire procedure defined by law to provide services to the State, and whose process "is easier".
"We are continually paying everything that is in the system and that may have a payment period of more than 90 days, we try to honor our commitments. Everything that is in the system is paid, with the exception of some exceptions in which we have more than 60 or 90 days unpaid and which will also be resolved shortly", he said.
Vera Daves underlined that, for cases that do not comply with the normal procedure, "there the procedure is different".
"We have to carry out a greater verification, the General Inspectorate of State Administration [IGAE] has to certify this debt and then it returns to us, once certified, to enter into the process of regularization and payment", she explained.
The official added that the speed of payment depends on "the moment of treasury that we are experiencing and the pressure of the present".
"At the same time, we have to continue to pay current expenses and also settle all those debts that are certified, but the process runs, follows its normal course and we have at all times shared the situation with the companies that are in this situation", he highlighted.
Vera Daves de Sousa reinforced that the information is shared with the Portuguese embassy in Angola, whenever requested, and the companies themselves have interacted with the Ministry of Finance.
"What I can guarantee is that all the companies that are providing services and have followed the entire ritual of executing the expenses, these are the ones that we have been more agile in paying and that are also less pressured in relation to arrears. In relation to the others we do not consider them less important, we have to follow the certification process and then the treasury capacity to honor this commitment without jeopardizing the need to meet the State's current expenses", she observed.
