Vera Daves de Sousa spoke this Monday at the signing ceremony of an agreement between the Government and the World Bank worth 300 million dollars for the Project to Accelerate Economic Diversification and Job Creation.
The minister underlined that the country's economy "still has a great dependence on oil exports and revenues" and is subject to volatility, both in price and in production, a situation that "has been accentuated in recent times, reflecting among others also in the foreign exchange market and with consequences that are already public".
"But the Government wants to reaffirm here - and this signature is proof of that - its effort and commitment so that not only are all commitments with internal and external debtors fulfilled with due regularity, with all obligations related to salaries of public servants and essential State services, but also greater resilience of public finances to external shocks to ensure that we increasingly have alternative sources of revenue and also increasingly have additional job creation mechanisms", said Vera Daves de Sousa.
According to the minister, the agreement signed between the parties is important, highlighting the shared vision of the importance of economic diversification.
"The importance of improving the business environment, the importance of finding alternative ways to finance infrastructure, the importance of creating jobs and improving the living conditions of citizens", she underlined.
Vera Daves de Sousa called for even greater involvement on the part of everyone, especially the World Bank, in order to unblock "everything that may be preventing a greater and better participation of private investment in key sectors of the Angolan economy".
"We are also grateful for the fact that the economic agents responded to our appeal, despite the still adverse circumstances and the partnership that they should form with us so that we constructively identify and remove what may still be the cause of the greatest obstacle in what is normal operation of our economy and what is the creation of basic conditions for private investment", she maintained.
