Angola keen to unload state-run firms

LUANDA – Angola is planning to privatise many of its more than 250 state-owned firms, but there are fears that the process could be marked by cronyism and cement the oil-rich nation’s reputation as one of Africa’s most corrupt.

In an interview with Reuters, Angola’s secretary of state for public enterprises said there were too many state-owned companies and that some, especially those that were poorly run, should be sold to investors or liquidated. “We need to reduce the complexity of the public sector.We need a new privatisation policy, keeping only companies that are essential for the state – the sector needs to be more hygienic and easier to run,” Augusto Tomas said on Friday.Angola’s state-run sector ballooned in the late 1970s and 1980s when its Marxist government embarked on a massive nationalisation campaign that reached into virtually every corner of the economy.Nearly three decades later state firms control vast assets in industry, fisheries, agriculture, banking and transport and communications.Even some bakeries are state-owned.But the collapse of communism and an oil-fuelled economic boom has prompted Angola’s ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a collection of reformed Marxists and Western-leaning technocrats, to embrace privatisation.Officials have been further spurred by massive growth in private investment since the end of a 27-year civil war in 2002 and the need to find money to rebuild the country’s shattered infrastructure.Some areas of the economy have already been privatised – independent banks and insurance companies have emerged in recent years and a private mobile telecommunications company has taken a large share of the burgeoning cellphone market.Nampa-Reuters”We need to reduce the complexity of the public sector.We need a new privatisation policy, keeping only companies that are essential for the state – the sector needs to be more hygienic and easier to run,” Augusto Tomas said on Friday.Angola’s state-run sector ballooned in the late 1970s and 1980s when its Marxist government embarked on a massive nationalisation campaign that reached into virtually every corner of the economy.Nearly three decades later state firms control vast assets in industry, fisheries, agriculture, banking and transport and communications.Even some bakeries are state-owned.But the collapse of communism and an oil-fuelled economic boom has prompted Angola’s ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a collection of reformed Marxists and Western-leaning technocrats, to embrace privatisation.Officials have been further spurred by massive growth in private investment since the end of a 27-year civil war in 2002 and the need to find money to rebuild the country’s shattered infrastructure.Some areas of the economy have already been privatised – independent banks and insurance companies have emerged in recent years and a private mobile telecommunications company has taken a large share of the burgeoning cellphone market.Nampa-Reuters