Africa-Press – Angola. The announcement of the drilling of Sonangol’s first onshore oil well, in Luanda, marked the last seven days of the Economic Desk’s news.
The drilling rig is scheduled to start for the completion of the installation within a week.
The installation marks the reactivation of oil and natural gas production in the Onshore Kwanza Basin, located in the municipality of Cabo Ledo, municipality of Quissama, province of Luanda.
The resumption of crude oil exploration in the so-called “Well Tobias-13” (Spude date) comes 27 years after the deactivation of oil operations in Block KON-11, which has been inactive since 1996.
Another highlight of the week is the announcement of the inauguration, on 10 November of this year, of the new Dr. António Agostinho Neto International Airport (AIAAN), budgeted at US$2.8 billion.
Located 42 kilometers from the center of Luanda, in the municipality of Icolo e Bengo, in an area of 75 square kilometers, the new airport was designed to accommodate large aircraft such as the Airbus-A380, with a capacity to handle 15 million passengers per year, a volume five times higher than the current 4 de Fevereiro International Airport
Also noteworthy was the information on the availability, by the Ministry of Finance, of 153 billion kwanzas for financial support for the production of food and animal protein, within the framework of the implementation of the Executive’s Economic Agenda.
For this purpose, a public guarantee was issued for the financing of the 2024 agricultural campaign, with the financier – Banco Angolano de Investimentos (BAI) in the amount of Kz 43 billion, with a maturity of 12 months, an interest rate of 7% per year.
As part of this process, financial institutions such as the Credit Guarantee Fund (FGC) were recapitalised, in the amount of Kz 50 billion, the Banco de Fundo Desenvolvimento de Angola (BDA), with Kz 20 billion, the Fundo Angolano de Venture Capital (FACRA), with Kz 5 billion, and the same amount for FADA – Agrarian Development Support Fund.
Another highlight is the Privatization Program (PROPRIV), which allowed the collection of 980 billion Kwanzas, with the sale of 73 assets, in the first phase.
According to the deputy coordinator of PROPRIV, Ottoniel Dos Santos, of the referred amounts, 605 billion kwanzas are overdue installments.
The also Secretary of State for the Treasury, who was speaking after the Inter-Ministerial Meeting on the Privatization Programme, made it known that in the Special Economic Zone-Luanda/Bengo (ZEE) two assets will be privatised, Indutubo and Mecametal, while in province of Cabinda the manufacturing units such as a mill and a cooling complex.
It was also mentioned in the last seven days that the Angolan Debt and Stock Exchange (BODIVA) approved, on Friday, August 25, the request to hold a special session on the stock exchange and the admission to trading of the private bonds of the Sonangol, in the minimum amount of 75 billion kwanzas.
The said special session will take place on the 13th of September and is intended to determine, based on the pre-defined screening criteria in the prospectus, the results of the offer and will culminate in the disclosure of the results, on the same day, on the BODIVA website , according to a note published by the institution.
BODIVA also informs that after the physical and financial settlement of the offer, the “Ring the Bell” session will take place on the 15th of September, which will mark the admission, and a live transaction of Sonangol’s private obligations on the Private Bond Exchange Market “MBOP”.
Also, in relation to the national oil company, it was informed that Sonangol acquired from the Republic of China 34 reservoirs of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which are being unloaded at the Oceanic Terminal of Barra do Dande (TOB), in Bengo, in the framework of the strategy to increase the storage capacity of petroleum derivatives.
This acquisition, which began in October 2022, has a storage capacity of 102,000 cubic meters of LPG (cooking gas) and is part of the completion of the Dande Ocean Terminal project.
According to the director of the Dande Ocean Terminal project, Mauro Graça, who was speaking to Rádio Ngol, these are structures measuring 72 meters long, eight meters in diameter and weighing 400 tonnes each.
The week was also marked by the fact that Angola was among the three countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) that reached, in 2022, the regional target of six months of import coverage.
The special representative of Angola to the organization, Beatriz Morais, regarding the recently ended 43rd Summit of Heads of State and Government of SADC, organized in Luanda, indicated that the other two countries are the Botswana and Mauritius.
According to Beatriz Morais, who is also Angola’s ambassador to Botswana, external reserves in the region decreased on average to 4.4 months of import coverage, in 2022, against the 5.9 months reached in the previous year.
Also underlined was the fact that the National Bank of Angola (BNA) plans to start, on 15 September, the first tests to assess the efficiency of the risk management system, with emphasis on Standbox cybersecurity.
According to the sub-director of BNA’s Payment Systems area, Nuno Alves, the Sandbox is a security mechanism/tool that separates running programs, in an effort to mitigate system failures and/or software vulnerabilities.
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