The sector's stakeholders, who recognise difficulties due to weak purchasing power at a particular time to the pandemic, state support to the sector "is necessary but needs robust procedures".
The government announced Friday that the 17.6 billion kwanza credit line from the Angolan Development Bank (BDA) to support companies due to the covid-19 has 1964 applications.
According to the chairman of the board of directors of the modern food marketing and distribution company, Raul Mateus, the model for paying for the products, as part of the credit, "needs to be further developed.
"In principle, it is to reduce costs and make prices come in cheaper, to avoid monopolies and oligopolies because it was said that there was already a list of suppliers and as you know the market works better when there are more offers," he said in statements to journalists.
Speaking at the end of a consultation meeting with agri-food distribution agents on the implementation of economic relief measures, he considered that "the 20 per cent of formal agricultural production should also be included in the universe of suppliers".
"If they are not on the list, since the remaining percentage corresponds to the informal market, they will have difficulties in selling", he stressed.
The BDA credit line, with a rate of 9 per cent and a two-year maturity, a 180-day capital shortage aims to finance the purchase of trade operators and the distribution to national producers of products such as maize, cassava, wheat, rice, sugar, cabbage, potatoes, among others.
For the entrepreneur, the two years of maturity are necessary, but, he noted, it is necessary that the government "work a little more with the associations in order to create more efficient and advantageous procedures for consumers and for the economy that at this time is inert".
For his part, the representative of the Association of Industrial Traders of Viana, in Luanda, Restinim Henriques, valued the measures of the Government to mitigate the impact of covid-19 in the productive sector, alerting to the "fight against unfair competition.
"I have been in the market and I know that we have had unfair competition, where several companies use prices to kill other companies and it is very harmful to the economy because it seeks to exist in the market monopolies," he said.
According to the entrepreneur, there must be caution in this feeling and he said that he believes that "the executive is also attentive to this issue so that companies do not lose this funding".
The meeting was promoted this Friday in Luanda by the ministries of Economy and Planning, Industry and Trade and Agriculture and Fisheries.
Angola has 36 confirmed cases of covid-19, including 23 active cases, 11 recovered and two deaths.
