The parliamentary group of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) sent a request to the National Assembly table this Wednesday asking for the discussion of the country's debt budget limits, as a preliminary point before the approval of the General State Budget (OGE) 2024 in the plenary, an initiative rejected.
UNITA, in its presentation, recalls that parliament unanimously approved, on November 14th, the request to the executive for the Country's General Debt Strategy in the Medium and Long Term, therefore asking for explanations about the axes of the aforementioned plan for the Angolan people know how much Angola owes, who it owes it to and what the respective interest rate is.
In the document presented to the plenary and in a generic way by the first secretary of the National Assembly, Manuel Dembo, UNITA recalls that the Public Finance Sustainability Law establishes a limit of 60 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
"This limit was greatly exceeded in 2021, it was exceeded in 2022 and continues to not be respected in 2023. For 2024, the executive is already telling us that it will not respect the limit that the law establishes. The public debt ratio, which should not exceed 60 percent of GDP, is already at 84 percent of GDP", states UNITA.
The opposition party even asks the Angolan executive and parliament for clarification about the "constant disregard" of budgetary debt limits, questioning the "legitimacy" of the legislative body in approving a 2024 OGE that will allocate almost 60 percent of its revenues to pay debt.
The OGE 2024 proposal, which sets expenses and estimates global revenues valued at 24.7 billion kwanzas, was approved this Wednesday in its entirety by parliament.
At least 57.8 percent of total Budget expenditure for the 2024 financial year, estimated at 14.3 billion kwanzas, will be allocated to servicing public debt, internal and external, as stated in the budget. On the occasion, the president of parliament, Carolina Cerqueira, asked the Minister of State for Economic Coordination, José de Lima Massano, for extraordinary explanations to react to the request presented by UNITA.
Massano, in his intervention, noted that the issue of State debt was addressed during discussions on the specificity of the OGE 2024 proposal, noting that the Medium-Term Debt Strategy 2022-2024 "is a public document".
Regarding the Annual Debt Plan for 2024, he explained, it will be drawn up when the budget is approved and published for the year 2024. "Soon afterwards we should also make this annual debt plan public", he promised.
Liberty Chiyaka rebutted, at the time, the Minister of State's arguments, stating that he "did not answer" all the questions he raised in the request.
The president of the National Assembly, Carolina Cerqueira, justified, in her intervention, that this Wednesday's plenary session had as its only point the final vote on the OGE to justify the rejection of UNITA's proposal.
"All other adjacent issues are not mentioned here, clarification was made and, at the right time, we will have the opportunity to discuss these issues", she stressed, without further details.
