"We want to drink this positive experience that is existing in Portugal, obviously within a broader context of the European Union, and that has forced, in some way, a regulatory and supervisory evolution of the regulatory bodies" of the country, said Ricardo Veigas de Abreu.
"This experience will help (...) our capacity to better ensure effective regulation and supervision, in a context in which Angola is inserted in a region, or in an important economic sub-region, where it intends to play a key role in what concerns the mobility of people and goods and all aspects of logistics," added the minister, referring directly to southern Africa.
The minister was speaking at the signing of a memorandum of understanding for cooperation between the National Road Transport Institute (INTR) of Angola and the Mobility and Transport Authority (AMT), which aims at several areas of cooperation, among which the "regulation and supervision of road transport infrastructures and services, of the road mode, referring to the transport of passengers and goods".
Stressing the importance of this agreement, the head of the Angolan government pointed out that mobility "is a crucial issue, which ends up being a catalyst or facilitator of what may be economic growth.
"And the better and more efficient its regulation, supervision, and oversight, the more economies benefit from this role," he stressed.
Therefore, he added: "We have no doubt that the experience of the AMT will be very important for the set of actions that we have been developing".
The minister also emphasized the importance of the structural reforms that are being carried out in Angola, including in his sector, highlighting the approval of the law for independent administrative entities. "It is a fundamental instrument to allow us to have authorities and regulatory bodies and supervision and inspection with a very objective degree of effectiveness and efficiency, guaranteeing their autonomy and independence in relation to what may be the political intervention in the regulation of the activity sectors," he advocated.
In addition, he said that Angola is to "launch, soon, the approval of the National Agency for Land Transport".
"We haven't reached the stage of putting in a single body the regulation of the different bodies, as happens here with the AMT, which only doesn't have the civil aviation sector. But we are evolving in the sense of assuring that, in a short period of time, it will be possible to merge the organs, because there is complementarity in the authorities of mobility and transport", he assured.
In a first phase, the minister explained that the National Agency for Land Transport "will replace INTR", which signed the memorandum of understanding, and the National Maritime Agency "will replace the Maritime and Port Institute of Angola, already in an institutional evolution, which allows for greater autonomy, independence and regulation capacity".
The portuguese Deputy Secretary of State and Communications, Hugo Santos Mendes, for his part, stressed "the ambition" of the memorandum signed, "focused on technology, regulation in the operation and supervision of infrastructure and services.
The portuguese official also highlighted the "availability to promote the training of technicians from both countries, through the exchange of people to exchange experiences," and emphasized the importance of cooperation between Angola and Portugal, for the mutual interest.
