Africa-Press – Angola. The World Bank has revised down its growth forecast for Angola from 2.7% to 2.3% this year and estimates expansion below 3% until at least 2028, due to the evolution of the oil sector.
“After strong growth in 2024 [of 4.4%], Angola’s economy slowed in the first half of 2025, with GDP growing by only 2.3%, due to the continued contraction of the oil sector,” reads the Africa Pulse report, released in Washington, on the eve of the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which take place next week.
In the document, which revises downwards the 2.7% growth forecast made in April to 2.3% this year, the Bank’s economists estimate that Angola will grow 2.6% in 2026 and 2.8% in 2027, with inflation remaining above 20% this year, then falling to 14.7% and 12.6% in the following two years.
“The recovery in economic activity was driven mainly by non-oil activities, particularly in the information and communication, accommodation and restaurant services, diamond and metallic mineral extraction, and manufacturing sectors,” the document reads, warning, however, that “oil production has declined due to the depletion of oil fields after years of disinvestment.”
Angola, moreover, will always grow below the regional average for Eastern and Southern Africa, the geographic division the World Bank uses in its reports; thus, while the region grows 3.2% this year and accelerates to an average of 4.1% in 2026 and 2027, Angola remains below 3% and, like South Africa, undermines the regional average.
“Excluding these two large countries, the sub-region is expected to grow by 3.3% in 2024 and 4.7% in 2025 and anchor itself at an even higher rate of 5.9% in 2026 and 2027,” says the World Bank.
In addition to experiencing slower growth than the region, Angola also compares poorly with its peers in terms of inflation, as the World Bank points out that, after a peak of 9.3% in 2022, following the Covid-19 pandemic, price increases fell to 4.5% last year and are expected to hover around 4% this year and next.
Angola, for its part, is among the nine countries, including the Portuguese-speaking São Tomé and Príncipe, that will maintain inflation above 10% this year.
In the report, which examines the evolution of African economies in light of this year’s theme, ‘Pathways to Job Creation in Africa,’ World Bank economists say that “access to finance is a major obstacle faced by businesses,” with more than a third of businesses surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa citing finance as a “very serious constraint on their business.”
In Angola, this percentage rises to almost 70%, the highest in the region, above the 56% in Benin, the 59% in Mali or the 51.8% in Ivory Coast, which compare, for example, with the 9% in Vietnam or the 15% in Indonesia.
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