"Due to the negative impact caused by the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, we had a budget imbalance of 1.5 percent, still better than the Budget forecast, which pointed to 4 percent, but for this year, despite the Budget pointing to a deficit of 2.3 percent, the most recent forecasts point to a positive result of 2.6 percent of GDP," said the ruler.
Speaking on behalf of the Finance Minister at the presentation by the African Development Bank (ADB) of the Strategy for Economic Governance in Africa (SEGA) between 2021 and 2025, Ottoniel Santos stressed that this revision of the outlook "means that this year Angola will return to the trajectory of positive fiscal years that began in 2018 and ended in 2020.
In the speech, the ruler reviewed the country's main reforms, from the debt sustainability strategy to the privatization program, to the fight against corruption and the effects of the pandemic on the country's public accounts.
"For an economy like ours, which has not grown since 2016, systematic deficits in the public accounts can lead to an unsustainable debt trajectory, which is why it is very important to prudently manage the national accounts and have strong institutions and good governance systems," Ottoniel Santos stressed.
The ADB presented on Friday the SEGA, which "envisions an Africa governed by transparent and accountable governments and strong institutions capable of delivering sustainable and inclusive growth, capable of sustaining resilient economies," according to the document.
The goal, it concludes, is to "guide the bank's operations in increasing public sector effectiveness at the national and sub-national levels, stimulate structural transformation, and ensure that citizens, communities and civic groups participate in public sector governance."
According to the Secretary of State for Treasury and Finance, the ADB has a portfolio of 1.2 billion dollars, about a billion euros, active in the country, divided between several areas, with 45 percent of this amount, equivalent to 531 million dollars to be applied in projects in the Energy sector.
The ADB is a multilateral financial entity dedicated to financing development, whose shareholders are African governments and other non-regional countries such as Portugal.
