Vera Daves de Sousa, who was speaking at the opening of the Public Business Sector (SEP) Meeting to present the 2023 SEP Aggregate Report, stated that there is still a need for greater commitment from managers to improve accountability indicators and for all operational entities to be accountable.
According to Vera Daves de Sousa, in the past financial year there was a certain stability in the level of compliance with reporting to the State Asset and Participation Management Institute (IGAPE), in relation to 2022.
The minister highlighted that among the challenges still to be overcome is the presentation of incomplete documentation, insufficiencies that continue to give rise to delays in the preparation of the SEP Aggregate Report and in the assessment and approval of the accounts presented, generating doubts about the reliability of the information reported and creating difficulties in issuing conclusive opinions on the financial and operational status of companies.
"As we are committed to minimising such constraints, we are instructing our teams to develop objective strategies and tools with a view to holding non-compliant managers accountable and, in some cases, penalising them," said the Minister of Finance.
The Minister highlighted that 2023 was a particularly challenging year, taking into account the developments in the international situation, which is more unpredictable, resulting from both the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine and the emergence of the "new" conflict in the Middle East, between Israel and Palestine, which has had a wide range of implications for populations and economies in general.
This set of events, Vera Daves de Sousa continued, caused the Angolan economy to slow down economic growth from 3 percent in 2022 to 0.9 percent in 2023 (minus 2.1 percentage points (p.p.), prices in the economy to rise to 20 percent, compared to the 13.9 percent recorded in 2022, plus 6.1 p.p., and the unemployment rate to rise at the end of the year to 31.9 percent, plus 2.3 p.p. compared to the value in 2022.
"The challenging economic scenario seen in 2023 was compounded by the end of the moratorium, then in force, for the amortization of external debt, fundamentally to China, requiring additional efforts in budget management", said the minister, praising the resilience and commitment of company managers, as revealed by the positive aggregate result achieved in 2023, in a total of 908.7 billion kwanzas, which represents an increase of 16.6 percent, compared to the net result of the previous year.
