Speaking to Lusa, the president of the Agricultural Association of Angola (AAPA), Wanderley Ribeiro, said that the issue is a concern for the business class, aggravated by the fact that inputs are almost all imported, "from knowledge to seed".
"They will now start to arrive in the country with a very high price, this will make the cost of production even higher. We already have a structure and cost of production that is very high, without having these exchange rate phenomena that we are experiencing live now", he stressed.
In addition to importing inputs, Wanderley Ribeiro expressed concern about the payment of wages, especially on large farms.
"We have a statistic that the 30 largest farms in the country are being managed by approximately 90 percent expatriates and then there is a treasury difficulty to be able to pay those wages and all that is going to have to be paid by the final consumer, it will have to to be included in the price of the product, so we are predicting the worsening of inflation as a result of the increase in the cost of production", he stressed.
On the other hand, this situation stimulates domestic demand on the part of large importers, but the product must be available.
"And what we have been feeling, mainly because the macro programs defined by the Government, Planagrão and others, which would help the sector to carry out a leverage operation, so as to have conditions at the end of this year, beginning next year, to have a greater availability of products, until this moment the availability of these resources is still unknown, so companies are also not able to finance themselves, to be able to move forward with their production", he said.
The president of the AAPA foresees an increase in inflation and to deal with the situation, "a remedy that does not have an immediate effect", the increase in domestic production.
"All of this is caused by our practically non-existent production, we have been promoting the issue of increasing national production a lot, but it is necessary that priority is effectively given to national production. The priority must be where the resource is and not where it is speech", he highlighted, noting that "agriculture has no resources, it does not see the financing mechanisms that effectively guarantee production", allied to Angolan human resources, still with few "that meet the requirements or level of 'expertise' that the companies seek".
In turn, the vice-president of the Industrial Association of Angola said that companies are feeling the rise in import prices, which in the end affects both companies and consumers.
Eliseu Gaspar considered that there is a set of measures to be taken to reverse the situation, first the increase in domestic production, followed by diversifying the economy, "which is not just rhetoric, but which is a fact".
"Another structural measure that has been proposed in recent days by various representatives of the Angolan business class is that oil companies must pay in foreign currency here, because what is happening now is that companies pay in kwanzas and they only transfer the corresponding exchange rate kwanzas for expenses and the rest of the amount is left outside the country, the Angolan bank and the Angolan market do not benefit from the sale of oil, what they enjoy is a residual value paid in kwanzas for their expenses", he stressed.
According to Eliseu Gaspar, a large part of the services provided to oil companies are carried out by foreign companies and are paid outside the country in foreign currency, "therefore, this situation must be reversed", proposing a revision to the law.
The vice-president of the association of industries also cited the difficulties in importing raw materials, "with rare exceptions", due to insufficient domestic production, recalling that "even cereals, the basic basket, is almost all imported".
The leader of the Luanda Artisanal, Semi-Industrial and Industrial Fishing Association (Apasil), Manuel Azevedo, said that "the dollar goes up and everything goes up".
"We live on imports, everything that is used in fishing is imported, for the boat, the only thing we don't order from outside is the nail, strap and wood, everything else comes from outside, so with the high exchange rate we have to adjust, we never increase the price, we adjust", he advanced.
Manuel Azevedo stressed that it is necessary to make adjustments because the purchasing power of the population has decreased, agreeing with his colleagues that the devaluation must be stopped with the national production.
The kwanza, which has been depreciating for several weeks, depreciated last week by 12 percent in just one week, settling today at 755 kwanzas per dollar and 825 kwanzas per euro, according to the official exchange rate of the National Bank of Angola (BNA).
