"The first priority is to survive, preserve life as much as possible and ensure that the health system does not collapse, and then maintain debt sustainability, which are our main pillars of the short-term strategy," replied Vera Daves, when asked on the Angolan Government's priorities for the coming months.
The minister spoke at a virtual meeting organized by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), within the scope of the Annual Meetings, with the title 'Post-Covid-19: Recovery and Resilience', which was attended by the IMF's executive director, Kristalina Georgieva.
"We have to look at the expectations of our population and the need to guarantee inclusive growth, we need to grow by more than 3 percent, which is the rate at which our population grows, to ensure the conditions to have access to jobs and quality public services ", pointed out the Minister of Finance, who intervened for the second time in one of the panels of the Annual Meetings, being the only African minister to do so on two separate occasions.
In the conversation he had with Bloomberg journalist Francine Lacqua, in which the director general of BlackRock and the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Financing also participated, Vera Daves admitted that it is difficult to manage the financial needs of short term and, at the same time, define longer strategies.
"We need to deal with short-term issues, health, debt, but we also need to have adequate conditions to grow and attract investment and make real the enormous potential that Angola has", defended the minister.
During the session, Vera Daves again asked for an extension of the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) and argued that the "breathing space" provided by this initiative is important, but needs to be supplemented with new financing.
"We need to combine these initiatives to suspend or postpone debt service with an initiative that allows fresh financing to ensure that we can recover the economy and companies struggling to gain access to these funds, since the state itself does not it manages to support all Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that struggle to stay open and not fire people ", argued Vera Daves.
The reforms "are only possible with courage and optimism", he added, concluding that "people have to believe that today they can suffer, but tomorrow they will have the benefits of the suffering brought by all these reforms".
The IMF predicts that Angola will face a recession of 4 percent this year, marking the fifth consecutive year with negative growth, and that the public debt will rise to 120.3 percent of GDP.
