Slower economic growth in Angola will have a negative effect on exports from the south-west African nation’s main trading partners, especially Portugal and Brazil. Forecasts released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, which groups the world’s industrialised countrirs, predict that Angola’s annual growth rate will fall by 15 percentage points in 2009.
This is bad news for Portugal, the former colonial power of the oil-rich, but cash-poor African nation, which in 2007 posted oustanding gross domestic product, GDP, growth of 20 per cent. Portugal is experiencing serious economic difficulties, with a growth rate lower than expected. One- quarter of the country’s population is experiencing loss of buying power for the fifth consecutive year, and aq widening gap between the rich and the poor.
Jorge Braga de Macedo, professor of Economics, who served as Portugal’s finance minister from 1991 to 1993, says the slowdown in the Angolan economy will have an undisputedly negative effect on Portugal.” Oil contributed 60 per cent of Angola’s GDP, and 95 per cent of its exports. In this respect, the country’s economy is over-specialised, more than is advisable for its population,” Macedo said.
Last Month, the OECD and the African Development Bank presented a report titled ” African Economic Outlook 2008”, in which they estimate that Angolan economic growth will fall to 11.5 per cent in 2008 and 5.1 per cent in 2009, a modest gigure compared with the results of previous years.