"In Angola, there are two complicated points that are not worth hiding, which are the cycle of payments and renegotiation of debt, in which 2020 is an important year and the country was not included in this first list of debt forgiveness that was granted by the World Bank and, finally, there is not at this moment an inevitable thing that is a Marshall Plan for African countries", João Traça defended in an interview with Lusa, referring to the plan drawn up by the United States to rebuild Europe after the Second World War.
"The economy of a country like Angola - very dependent on oil, which is at a very low price - after the pandemic will have great difficulty in surviving if it doesn't have good international support, and there is a notion from European countries that this plan will be an inevitability for a country like Angola to have a more favourable outlook in terms of future solvency," added the lawyer and president of the CCIPA.
Angola is one of the countries most affected in Africa by the combination of the sharp drop in oil prices and social isolation measures, with most analysts and financial institutions anticipating another year of economic recession in 2020, the fifth consecutive year of negative growth.
"Angola's future is linked to its capacity to attract more direct foreign investment, which is related to its capacity to make legislative changes, and hence the importance of the law on reciprocal investment protection, which is very important for Portuguese companies because it makes their projects more bankable (commercially viable) without the need for support from the Portuguese state," added the leader of the CCIPA.
For João Traça, the times of the covid-19 pandemic are "very hard times for both economies, neither is prepared to react to a pandemic like this, but at the end of this period of confinement we have to conclude that Portugal and Angola continue to be, from a business point of view, and beyond that, two countries that have to have a very strong strategic partnership".
The post-pandemic 'new normal', he concluded, "cannot leave behind this relationship" between the two countries.
On a global level, according to an assessment by the AFP news agency, the covid-19 pandemic has already caused more than 276,000 deaths and infected more than 3.9 million people in 195 countries and territories.
