Luanda - The World Bank (WB) foresees that the Angolan economy will register, this year, the first economic growth since 2016, with an increase of 0.4%, but warns that the country is still facing a hard time in terms of debt and oil production.
According to Lusa news agency, which mentions a report by the World Bank (WB), Angola should grow 0.4% in 2021 and 3.1% in 2022, after consecutive five years of recession.
However, the state is still grappling with its debt and a weak performance of the oil industry, according to the agency, based on the report “O Pulsar de Africa”, released as part of the WB Annual Meetings and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which runs until the end of this week in Washington, United States of America.
It adds that the WB, different to the IMF, which forecasts a recession of 0.7% for Angola, foresees that the biggest African economies will come out of recession this year, although growing at different levels, but all with great difficulties to support companies and people to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic issues.
“Due to the short budget space, African countries were not able to inject the necessary levels of resources to launch a vigorous political response to Covid-19”, reports Lusa, always referring to the WB's annual report on sub-Saharan Africa.
The WB also underlines that some countries, including Angola, were forced to apply austerity measures when the debt became unsustainable.
Oil allowed Angola to engage in the search for large amounts of international loans, explains the publication.
“Debt remains a medium-term concern, despite the partial renegotiation of the external debt service, the Debit Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), launched in April 2020 to help the most vulnerable countries”, concludes the article.
