For the economist, the INE data "are not reliable" because there is "an enormous credibility deficit" in relation to the agency, which "fantastically says that in a pandemic year 737,215 jobs were created.
"Well, the government has to explain, because I don't understand it either. The most fantastic data of the INE numbers is not the comparison of numbers with the quarter, but the comparison with the year," said this Thursday Carlos Rosado de Carvalho in statements to Lusa.
"And what we see when we compare the numbers of the first quarter of 2021 with that of 2020, we all know that in the first quarter of 2020 there was no pandemic, the economy began to close in the second quarter of 2020," he noted.
The INE, notes the economist, "tells us that the employed population increased by 730,215 and, this, nobody can believe": How is it that we at the end of a year of pandemic have more jobs than we had before the pandemic," he questioned.
The unemployment rate in Angola was 30.5 percent in the first quarter of 2021, a reduction of 1.5 percentage points compared to the same period in the previous year, according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE).
Between January and March, the unemployment rate was estimated at 30.5 percent, 0.1 percentage points lower than in the previous quarter (30.6 percent) and 1.5 percentage points lower than in the same quarter of the previous year (32.0 percent).
In the first quarter of 2021, the unemployed population, estimated at 4,744,020 persons aged 15 or older, decreased by 0.1 percent (3602 persons) from the previous quarter.
However, there was an increase of 8563 unemployed people year-on-year, representing an increase of 0.2 percent.
The employed population aged 15 and over was estimated at 10,821,205, or an increase of 0.7 percent from the previous quarter (71,717 more people) and 7.3 percent from the same quarter in 2020.
In his generic approach to the data published by INE, Rosado reiterates his disquiet about the possibility that "737,215 jobs were created in a pandemic year," when, he noted, the President, João Lourenço, promised in 2017 during the election campaign to create 500,000 jobs.
"These are numbers that nobody believes, because INE is being manipulated politically, that is, INE is giving the data that the government wants it to give, and therefore nobody trusts INE's data," he said.
"There is a huge credibility deficit regarding INE. Nobody believes that 737,215 jobs were created in the pandemic," insisted the journalist.
Carlos Rosado de Carvalho reiterates the possibility that there may be some "manipulation of INE's data", because, he justifies, INE's data "is now being used to support what the Government says".
The Government, he said, "speaks before the numbers are published, as is the case of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the second quarter, should only be published in July, but the Minister of Economy and Planning has already started talking about the numbers and now let's see what will happen.
He also stated that the unemployment data for the first quarter of 2021 was "published late" and reaffirmed that there is a "huge credibility deficit" in INE and that the recent figures, he stressed, "confirm this."
"Nobody believes these numbers and they confirm this, because the economy continues to be confined to the sanitary fence in Luanda and these numbers do not match reality," he reaffirmed.
The reality, he further emphasized, "is that we have companies closing, people going unemployed, and the INE comes to tell us that the employed population increased in a year of pandemic," he concluded.
The employment rate in the first quarter of 2021, according to INE, stood at 62.6 percent, down 0.3 percent from the previous quarter (62.8 percent) and an increase of 3.3 percent from the same quarter (60.7 percent).
The INE report highlights that the public calamity situation due to covid-19 resulted in the temporary slowdown of production of goods and services, particularly non-essential ones, as well as restrictions on the free movement of people, particularly in the case of Luanda which has been under sanitary fence for over a year.
