According to the economist, the Government will not be able to reverse the near stagnation of the economy, registered in the first quarter of this year, if it "maintains the current logic of central planning, where it plans everything and ties together entrepreneurs, who are the engines of development".
"Entrepreneurs and businessmen find themselves completely tied up in a context of licensing for everything and for nothing, in a context in which what is the best mechanism for regulating the economy is centralized", said Precioso Domingos.
Commenting to Lusa on data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) which indicate that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell by 1.1 percent in the first three months of 2023 compared to the previous quarter, the specialist even admitted "a new recession" this year.
Domingos insists that the Government "continues to be the central planner" and that, in conducting macroeconomic policy, "even the small investments and entrepreneurs that still persist end up eclipsing later".
"In other words, their projects don't even reach the middle or the end, because we're always going to stay in this conjuncture logic, it went up, down or vice versa", he stressed.
The economist defended that Angola needs a "long period of stability and growth", but for that it is necessary to "free the forces and talent of entrepreneurs", alluding to the need for them to be the main actors of development.
Angola's GDP stood at 0.3 percent in the first three months of 2023, year-on-year, and fell by 1.1 percent compared to the previous quarter, according to INE.
According to the Quick Information Sheet, to which Lusa had access, this is the first time that quarterly GDP has slipped into negative territory since the second quarter of 2021.
The decline in oil exploration and refining activity (1.11 percentage points) was the basis for the negative quarterly variation and anemic growth in the first quarter of 2023.
Regarding the measures that should be taken to reverse the current trend, Precioso Domingos referred that Angola does not need to continue to depend on oil to take steps, but rather to carry out political and market reforms.
"[Oil] is not a problem, it has never been a problem, and we don't need to continue to depend on oil to take steps, we need to create the basics, first the country needs to carry out the necessary political reforms and also market reforms", noticed.
For the university professor, the reforms should give rise to the so-called "institutional framework" that "allows a market economy to move naturally".
"And for that, [move] the basics of the market economy, without the need to increase taxes to annihilate the entrepreneur, you have to start respecting property titles, property rights, you have to allow prices to be free," he noted.
In the opinion of this expert, free prices are a way for the country to achieve "deflation and/or a lowering of the population's cost of living" in the short or medium term.
"We have to have a situation here of more liberalization, more deregulation, of letting people freely do what they want, the Government has to leave central planning behind and let the actors do it", he reiterated.
He also admitted that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of 2023 could be symptomatic of a new recession for the current economic year in Angola, a scenario that, if it materializes, would be the "interruption of a recovery process".
"With this situation, we can in fact go back to a recession and not even reach stabilization, but, as I say, these are mere conjectures and we need to look at more structural issues that will guarantee true stabilization and long-term growth", concluded Precioso Domingos.
