The consideration was made by the Minister of Finance, Vera Daves, in an interview with RTP Africa, last Sunday, in Lisbon (Portugal).
On the occasion, the holder of the Finance portfolio considered that the aforementioned agreement with the World Bank "is the way" to institutionalize the municipalities, and that it will help to "reinforce the capacity of municipal administrations to carry out territorial planning", urban planning and manage their own finance.
"It's the way. It's the way we're going to make the process of creating municipalities as smooth as possible. This project aims at strengthening the capacity of municipal administrations in these target municipalities to carry out territorial planning, to carry out urban planning, to manage the their own finances and it is our first test of a program that disburses in favor of the municipalities according to the goals that are reached by them", said Vera Daves.
"So that municipalities, as they advance in this ability to better manage their finances, in their ability to organize the territory, will have access to disbursements from the World Bank", added the official, in an interview with RTP Africa.
Regarding the chosen municipalities, the finance minister explained that they decided to focus on a set of municipalities that "have a greater concentration of people" and, thus, selected Lubango, Benguela, Cabinda, Huambo, among others.
"It's a set of municipalities in those that are the largest urban centers, we think it's better to focus on those that have the highest concentration of people, also on those that have the greatest territorial planning challenges, and so we focus on the large urban centers: Lubango, Benguela, Cabinda, Huambo and a few others. We identified municipalities in these provinces, in which using them as a pilot later we can replicate the same experience for others in which the challenge is there but is less complex than these", said Vera Daves, in statements to RTP Africa.
Regarding the contribution of 51 percent of tax revenues, the majority of which comes from oil, the minister informed that they have been charting a path to gradually reduce dependence on oil and recalled that eight years ago oil represented around 75 percent of percent of total tax revenues, which currently stand at a ratio of 60/40 percent.
"This is a path that we have been following, we have been gradually reducing that dependence. We already had about eight years ago oil revenues contributing with 75 percent of total tax revenues, today we are already reducing, there are already 60/40 and we are very close to reaching 50/50", she said and added: "Today we already have 60 oil revenues, 40 non-oil revenues and this is a path that is being built as we begin to reap the fruits of our diversification agenda economic".
Debt over Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and related IMF forecasts (63.3 percent this year and 59.2 percent next year) were also present in the conversation. "Our benchmark is our fiscal sustainability law, a sustainability law with a set of targets, which was prepared with technical assistance from the IMF during the program we had with the IMF, and that law provides for a 60 percent target of medium term for the debt-GDP ratio", he said, adding that the "IMF expected us to reach this in 2025 and we hope to achieve it sooner".
The holder of the Finance portfolio also said that everything they can do to reduce "this ratio even more" they will do, "not only through GDP growth, but also through the most conservative possible contracting of new financing".
"We want tax revenue to contribute more and more to the financing of activities", she added, in an interview with RTP Africa.
