Speaking to Lusa, Carlos Magalhães, president of the Swiss Business Council (SBC), launched in Luanda last week, pointed out that Angola is a safe country to invest in and that it is experiencing great growth with countless opportunities for business, agriculture, fisheries, commerce, health, education, technologies, civil construction, energy and mines.
"We have the executive trying to improve the political and economic administrative part in the country to provide a more favorable environment for business", he underlined.
There are currently 19 active Swiss companies in Angola and the trade balance showed a positive balance for Angola in 2022 with exports from Switzerland to Angola worth 8.31 million Swiss francs (8.4 million euros) while Swiss imports were worth 17.56 million Swiss francs (17.8 million euros).
Carlos Magalhães said that Switzerland has 'know how' in several strong sectors such as financial services, insurance, consultancy, tourism and commerce, which Angola can take advantage of, admitting that it will be more difficult to "invite" high technology and precision industries to Angola, lack of skilled labor.
"But we have agriculture, also a strong point, and tourism, since Angola offers a huge coastline, there is a lot of potential to increase tourism", he suggested.
"We want to look at these points and attract Swiss investors who want to come to Angola and Angolan businessmen who are interested in doing business with Switzerland and that we can support", said the businessman.
"We are a chamber of commerce with the objective of connecting, holding events regularly. The biggest challenge will be to explain in Switzerland that they find in Angola a stable country to do business, which is different from what we had a few years ago and that Swiss businessmen can look at Angola differently," he said.
He stressed, on the other hand, that "Switzerland does not only have banks and has much more to offer", so it is intended to improve reciprocal knowledge to help the economy of both countries.
Among the founding companies of the SBC are multinationals such as Sika, MSC, Nestlé, Trafigura, Jembas, Natco and Transorga.
