Luanda - The Secretary of State for Finance and Treasury, Ottoniel dos Santos, said on Wednesday in Luanda that the government expects Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to grow by 2.8%, with country's total public debt ratio (internal and external) at around 69% in 2024.
Speaking at the presentation and public exhibition session of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Report on the Regional Economic Perspectives of Sub-Saharan Africa: "A Light on the Horizon?", he highlighted that the government debt stock is in the order of 52 billion kwanzas, 14 billion (domestic) and 38 billion (external), making the debt ratio, at the moment, approximately 85%.
“It is much higher than the ratio last year, but we are confident that, with the implementation of these measures, in 2023, and the year 2024, with the budget that is currently approved by the Executive and already in the hands of the National Assembly, we can close the year with a debt-to-GDP ratio of around 69%”, he stressed.
Ottoniel dos Santos considered the year 2023 to be challenging, taking into account that the price of oil, quantity produced, interest rates in international markets ended up conditioning the Government's action.
He added that, as a result of the various initiatives that we have been developing, both with the World Bank and the IMF, budget deviations have been identified and measures have been implemented to mitigate them.
He said that it is necessary to make cuts in spending, when there are fewer resources, but in an optimal way to ensure that, in fact, essential expenditure can be maintained to guarantee the country's growth.
Available data indicate that the ratio of public debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) went from around 134% in 2020 to less than 60% in 2022.
The decrease was due to the trajectory of economic growth that the country has been registering, with less need for debt, due to the fact that it is living with fiscal surpluses. HEM/AC/TED/DOJ
