World Report

Angola is committed to signing a deal with the International Monetary Fund

Aguinaldo Jaime, Minister Assistant to the Prime Minister

llegations in the international press have abounded in the past year of the Angolan government’s misappropriation of the country’s oil and diamonds revenues, and international organizations such as Global Witness and the International Monetary Fund have been vocal in pressing for greater transparency and accountability in the country. Certainly for many years before the signing of the peace treaty in 2002, Angolan diamonds were used to finance the government’s principal rival faction, UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), and were known around the world as ‘blood diamonds’. Likewise, the government, which controlled the country’s vast petroleum resources, used oil revenues to finance its defence. This was compounded by the extremely low quality of living conditions in the country. Despite its great potential for accumulating wealth, Angola has consistently ranked in the bottom 10 of almost every global socio-economic indicator, occupying the 164th position out of 175 countries in the 2003 Human Development Report. It has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, and more than one million internally displaced Angolans are currently dependent on international food aid. Average life expectancy in the country is only 40, and three-quarters of the population exist on less than $1 per day.

Angola is ready to take measures and move forward

Still, the Angolan government is justified in defending its position, as it has done repeatedly throughout the last few years. Under tremendous pressure to begin reconstructing what is essentially a devastated country, the government has simultaneously taken numerous measures to increase transparency and appease foreign monetary organisations, a fact that has gone largely unnoticed in the international press. Minister Assistant to the Prime Minister Aguinaldo Jaime comments, “The accusations that we have faced are fundamentally based on two factors. Firstly, during the war, Angola could not have transparent policies – no country can have transparent policies under those circumstances. Secondly, I think that the fact that Angola was associated with the Soviet bloc still influences the judgements that are made towards the country.” Minister Aguinaldo Jaime says that peace has brought an entirely new situation to the country, and that significant efforts have been made to improve transparency and accountability, including the creation of a more clearly defined state budget which is administered by the National Bank of Angola and the introduction of an on-line system between the public treasury, the National Bank and the Savings and Credit Bank, which allows all state payments to be monitored in real time. In collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the central bank has implemented debt management and financial analysis system software to monitor all external debt movements, and the country has begun to participate in the IMF’s General Data Dissemination System, which will aid the government in developing more accurate statistics for policy-making and analysis.

The government also created the Public Accounts Court in 2001 to regulate and monitor the use of public funds. Presiding Judge of the Public Accounts Court Julião António states, “The Account Court is an independent body, and is not under the authority of the President, nor any other governmental institution. Its main role is to supervise government ministers, managers of public businesses, as well as companies that receive government funds and majority state-owned companies, such as Sonangol and Endiama.” Lastly, and most importantly, President dos Santos agreed this year to disclose all oil-related financial information, and allow an audit of the state-owned oil giant, Sonangol. An independent study of the oil industry commissioned by the Angolan government and carried out by KPMG between 2002 and 2004 was also released to the public earlier this year, and the government is now in the process of implementing the study’s recommendations.