José de Lima Massano was speaking to the press at the end of the closing ceremony of the 17th United States of America-Africa Business Summit, co-organised by the Angolan Government and the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA), which took place in Luanda over three days.
The summit, which was attended by over 1500 participants, including heads of state, government officials and businesspeople, welcomed 490 Angolan, 202 African and 73 American companies, and nine legal instruments were signed in various sectors.
According to José de Lima Massano, the participation of people from all over the world, but particularly from the African continent, demonstrated Angola's capacity for mobilisation and organisation.
The government official stressed that many agreements were signed, but "more than these agreements, it is above all the visibility given to countries, particularly Angola", in terms of "opportunities, challenges" and Africa's desire "to transform, to make things happen".
The summit, he said, was "a unique moment", as was "everything else that will happen in the coming times, based on what has been demonstrated to be the potential of a nation".
Regarding the Lobito Corridor, a strategic railway infrastructure that connects the Port of Lobito in Angola to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), passing through Zambia, to facilitate the flow of minerals and goods, José de Lima Massano was pleased with the results achieved so far, and now intends to develop good private projects to capture the financial resources made available.
"The corridor is already in place, what we need now are quality projects that can capture the financial resources that are being made available, because these are not resources to finance public investments, they are essentially resources to support private initiatives", he stressed.
José de Lima Massano stressed the existence of a master plan for the Lobito Corridor, where the intention is to install logistics and agricultural production areas, but there needs to be private initiatives, capitalizing on the resources that Angola "fortunately" continues to receive from the United States, the European Union and many African multilateral institutions.
During the summit, an agreement was signed between the Angolan Sovereign Fund and Israeli businessman Haim Taib to launch an independent platform to accelerate investments in sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure, health, industry, education and digital inclusion, which aims to mobilize 1 billion dollars for the Lobito Corridor, with an initial investment of 100 million dollars.
African countries are not in a position to continue assuming debts in the way they are done today, José de Lima Massano continued, emphasizing that there are limitations.
"More debt could lead us to a point where our ability to service this debt begins to be questioned, but the needs are there, the infrastructure needs to continue to be developed, so we need to bring in the private sector," he argued.
One of the challenges, said the minister, continues to be attracting private capital for the construction of infrastructure, leaving the State free from debt.
"This is the challenge we face and it will lead us, even from a legal point of view, to make reforms, as happened recently with the energy sector, where transmission, for example, is a service that can currently be provided by the private sector, but which poses, for example, the challenge of price", he emphasized.
"If we have a price below the market, it will be difficult to attract this investment, so we have to find the balance, where the service is available, accessible, the capital is employed, but profitable. These are the balances that our countries have to find and the path that Angola also intends to follow", he emphasized.
