Africa-Press – Angola. The Minister of Economy and Planning (MEP), Mário Caetano João, considers it necessary to boost commercial banking to support agribusiness projects, to increase national production, reduce hunger and poverty.
The minister considers that the Support Program for Production, Diversification of Exports and Substitution of Imports (PRODESI) was a crucial tool to boost the production of food and animal protein.
In an interview with Televisao Pública de Angola, he underlined that PRODESI acts on agricultural, commercial and industrial activity, aiming at increasing production, access to internal and external markets, training (already with 20 thousand operators), as well as facilitating the granting credit to promoters.
According to the director, PRODESI controls 105,000 operators on its national production portal and has already disbursed more than 1.4 billion kwanzas, creating more than 75,000 jobs.
Mário Caetano João highlighted the fact that PRODESI is a successful program, as since 2020 4,795 have been approved, of which 3,500 have already been disbursed.
On the other hand, the official reaffirmed that the provision, by the Angolan Government, of 153 billion kwanzas for financial support for food and protein production will stimulate the economy and boost the cultivation of cereals, through the National Development Plan of Grain Production (PLANAGRÃO).
PLANAGRÃO is a project whose objective is to increase the production of rice, corn, wheat, soy and other cereals, and which is estimated at 2.8 billion kwanzas.
For this purpose, clarifies the minister, the public guarantee issued by the Government (153 billion) will serve to finance the 2024 agricultural campaign.
The intention, in the view of Mário Caetano João, is to explore the comparative advantages in plant and animal production of goods of general consumption, for this reason, one of the commercial banks will execute a guarantee of 30 billion for PLANAGRÃO products.
The minister also made it known that the Angola Development Bank (BDA), capitalized, comes up with around 20 billion kwanzas, exclusively, to serve PLANAPESCA and PLANAPECUÁRIA.
For this pursuit, the Angolan Venture Capital Fund (Facra) has 5 billion to streamline the value chain, warehouse, mini factory units, home processing.
According to the minister, non-financial institutions such as the Credit Guarantee Fund (FGC) were recapitalized out of this amount, for Kz 50 billion, to catalyze commercial banking, and Kz 5 billion for the Agrarian Development Support Fund (FADA ) to support the creation of cooperatives in the acquisition of credit.
Regarding the Informal Economy Reconversion Program (PREI), the minister considered that it is being improved and better adapted.
As for microcredit, the official added that there are packages in kwanzas, available to operators ranging from 50 to 500 thousand, from 500 to 2 million and from two to 7 million kwanzas.
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