"The biggest novelty of this Budget could be the creation of a fund for Health, where Health is no longer, in its entirety, free", said Victor Hugo Guilherme in an interview with the Lusa agency in Washington, as part of the Fund's Annual Meetings Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which take place this week in the North American capital.
"We are still studying, but at the moment healthcare is free, if a foreigner goes to a public hospital they don't pay anything, we don't even have a price list, but that will change", said the official, safeguarding that Angola will not have a private healthcare.
"It is being studied, in the final phase, but the idea is to create a 'mix', it is not that Health is completely private, although there is already a private component in Education and Health, but the idea is to start with public hospitals, for example through public-private partnerships", said the minister.
"We have cutting-edge hospitals, why not rent the x-ray service from a private individual to manage, and if the private user is paid there, and then there is the confirmed poor population that will benefit from this fund, which serves to cover mainly the poorer populations, to continue having access to healthcare", said the governor.
Asked what the value of this fund will be, Victor Hugo Guilherme said that "it has not yet been established", but how it will be financed is being outlined.
"We still have no idea of the value, the phase we are in now is to see how it will be fed, part of it will be from the Budget, the other parts could be, for example, a tax on the sale of tobacco, which is harmful to health, or of drinks, too, but we are studying and we still don't have defined values", he detailed.
What is certain is that this new model will already be reflected in the General State Budget, which will be presented to the National Assembly in the coming weeks, guaranteed the government official.
The document, he highlighted, foresees the continuation of "fat cutting" in the State machine and the continuation of privatizations, which will not undergo changes to the schedule defined in the program.
"The main focus of this Budget is revenue, but also expenditure; our focus is to increase revenue, but also reduce expenditure, there are fats that we want to cut in terms of funding, with companies that, when leaving the sphere of the State, reduce expenses," said the governor.
