The IMF announced on Wednesday that it approved Angola's request for increased financial assistance, immediately disbursing one billion dollars and bringing the total program to almost 4.5 billion dollars.
"The Angolan executive welcomes the positive conclusion of the third review and reaffirms its commitment to create the economic and institutional foundations that favor the flourishing of a robust and competitive private sector, the main foundation for economic and social prosperity", highlighted the Ministry of Finance (Minfin) in a statement released on its portal.
For the executive, the IMF demonstrates, with this conclusion, its support for the policies that have been being developed and “reaffirms the solvency of the Angolan debt”.
Minfin pointed out that this outcome occurred "following an extensive process of assessing the country's macro-financial performance and negotiations on the set of policies and economic reforms to be adopted in the near future".
According to the Government, the additional of one billion dollars aims to “compensate for the adverse economic effects of the pandemic” of the covid-19 and to continue the structural reforms aimed at “improving the country's potential economic growth”.
The ministry also stressed that "the IMF board of directors praised the Angolan Government for the effective response to the crisis", noting the "commitment" to a conservative fiscal stance and the "successful reformulation of the debt service profile with several major creditors" .
On Sunday, Minfin said "progress" in debt renegotiation without detailing creditors.
According to the statement released at the time, the Angolan authorities are “making progress in implementing the reformulation of the profiles of some oil-backed financing facilitators, a decision taken to better reflect the current market environment and provide considerable debt relief, while maintaining long-term oil production”.
In the same statement, the Ministry of Finance confirmed Angola's participation in the G20 initiative, called DSSI (Debt Suspension Initiative), having signed the memorandum of understanding with the Paris Club secretariat, which brings together the main public creditors, on August 31, 2020.
"It is currently working on the process of implementing debt suspension, an initiative that relies on all sovereign bilateral creditors," stated the document.
