According to the Secretary of State for Budget and Public Investments, Aia-Eza da Silva, Angola will not be able to pay its expenses with all the revenue it collects.
"So we are going to have to get into debt, this budget still foresees some level of indebtedness, so it is important that the deficit is not so high, because we already have a level of debt of the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] above 100 percent," Aia-Eza da Silva said in statements to Angolan public radio.
The GSB 2021 proposal, with estimated revenues and fixed expenses of 14.78 billion kwanzas (19.3 billion euros), goes to Tuesday for discussion and voting, in general, in the National Assembly.
The governor said that the deficit that the budget has at the moment is approximately 938 billion kwanzas, "and that would be the financing to be sought for the financing of this deficit, but this is only the current expenditure.
"Then we have the financing expenditure - financing the deficit is one thing and we will have to do it - but then we will have the financing of the level of indebtedness itself, which we already have today, and there are still other monies to consider," she noted.
The Secretary of State for the Budget and Public Investments admitted that the State Budget for the economic year 2021 was "one of the most difficult to elaborate in recent years, because the climate of uncertainty is still very big".
"Our oil production in this 20/21 budget is decreasing a lot, we are with a sharp drop in the oil GDP. In terms of barrels of oil, it's 1200 per day, which is quite a small production in relation to what would be the best forecasts for this same indicator," he stressed.
Aia-Eza praised the "very encouraging prospects" of the non-oil sector, however, insufficient to "pull the country's GDP alone.
"That's why the GDP growth rate for the country is zero for next year, which is not good, because we have been seeing successive recessions in our economic output in recent years and 2020 would be the year in which we were expecting a positive growth rate, which should be maintained for 2021," he added.
For the government, a prognosis of a zero growth rate does not help what are the expectations of production, creation, generation, more jobs, greater functionality in terms of production and goods and services for the national economy.
"But these are the indicators we have had for the presentation of budgets," he stressed.
The GSB 2021 proposal presents a fiscal deficit of about 2.2 percent of GDP, however, it represents an increase of 9.11 percent compared to the instrument in force, having been prepared on the basis of the conservative reference price of 39 dollars per barrel of oil, against the 40 dollars forecast by international economic agencies.
Angola will register negative growth rates for the fifth consecutive year, with a recession of around 3.3 percent expected by the end of this year and a zero global growth rate for 2021.
