Fernando Mascarenhas, who was speaking at the III Industry Forum, organized by the newspaper Expansão, warned of the fact that Angola is diverging from the region where it operates in terms of industrial production, despite having recovered between 2021 and 2022.
"We are going against the cycle and it is essential that we catch this train", underlined the 'partner' of the KPMG consultant, indicating that there has been a decrease in sectoral GVA since 2018, in absolute values, as well as a loss of relative weight on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The expert pointed to examples from other countries to demonstrate the impact of investments in infrastructure, such as roads, airports, ports and railways on industrial GVA, such as Kenya where industry GVA grew 6.9 percent in 2021, Rwanda (10.5 percent) or Ethiopia.
He also indicated some areas that are being developed in Angola and whose potential should be maximized, such as renewable energies and the creation of industrial parks, stressing that it is essential to increase integration and accelerate programs to support industrial development.
The Minister of Industry and Commerce, Victor Fernandes, welcomed the sector's results last year at the forum's opening session, taking into account that the real GDP of the manufacturing industry had an accumulated growth of 7.7 percent in the last five years and grew by around 6 percent last year, data that had been presented in March by the President of the Republic.
The official underlined that the political and social stability that Angola has been experiencing over the last 20 years has allowed the manufacturing industry to establish itself in a resilient way, despite the constraints of covid-19 and the global economy and insisted on the focus on national production, diversification and non-oil exports.
He also invoked several measures and reforms that the Government has carried out, including in the legal-institutional scope, and which allowed a perspective of sustained industrial growth in more than 160 projects, contributing to reduce imports and to employability.
