The minister, speaking at the end of the meeting of the Economic Committee of the Council of Ministers, also mentioned that if there are employees who have not received their salary, they should take this issue up with their human resources offices.
"All processed salaries are paid, so if there are public employees who do not have salaries paid, they should contact their human resources offices to understand what went wrong, because all salaries processed and which were included in the financial management system of the State until yesterday were fully paid", said the head of the Finance portfolio, quoted by Rádio Nacional de Angola (RNA).
Regarding debt, Vera Daves explained that what has happened so far is that they contract financing "at a greater speed" than the absorption capacity, ending up "paying immobilization commissions" because they have the financing contracted and are unable to disburse it.
"What has happened so far is that we contracted financing at a speed greater than our capacity to absorb them and we ended up paying immobilization commissions because we had the financing contracted there and were unable to disburse it because our budget space does not allow it. Paying out more would lead us to a debt service situation that is difficult to accommodate", she said.
"It is also one of the objectives to favor new financing that has grace periods of up to five years. In these grace periods, for five years, we do not pay interest or capital installments and also maturities between 15 and 20 years", she added.
Quoted by RNA, the Minister of Finance said that "to this is added the objective of, within the scope of active liability management, carrying out the effort of not only reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio", something they have already done "with the goal of reaching 60 percent, but also reducing the concentration of debt service in the short term", something that they "have to pay more and more attention to".
Regarding the Debt Strategy for 2024-2026 – approved this Wednesday by the Economic Commission of the Council of Ministers –, the minister said that the possibility of debt in international markets is not ruled out, however, only if conditions exist.
"Regarding the 2024-2026 Debt Strategy, the window has been created, we foresee this possibility. Regarding the 2024 Annual Debt Plan, we also foresee this window, conditioned on the financial conditions that the market is willing to offer. As happened in 2023 , we will not go to the market if the interest rate that was demanded from Angola is above our capacity to honor it", she stated, quoted by RNA.
