More than 250,000 economic operators were formalised between November 2021 and July 2023 in Angola, where informality is 80%, in a process that cost 6 billion kwanzas (€6.7 million), the government announced on Tuesday.
The figures were released today by Angola’s minister of public administration, labour and social security, Teresa Rodrigues Dias, who said that the issue of informality in the Angolan economy was a concern for the government.
“We have an informality rate of around 80% and to turn them into decent, sustainable jobs we naturally need to do the work of converting informal jobs into formal ones,” she said.
Speaking at the opening of the 1st International Forum for the Reconversion of the Informal Economy (FIREI), which is taking place in Luanda, Teresa Rodrigues Dias said that the first phase of the Programme for the Reconversion of the Informal Economy (PREI) formalised 253,000 economic agents between November 2021 and July 2023.
In her speech, the minister noted that under PREI, the Angolan government has provided 6 billion kwanzas in microcredit and that the actions of this programme must be “continually improved”.
Creating a database of the informal economy and transferring informal economic agents to formal ones are some of the PREI’s objectives, with the Angolan authorities planning to formalise one million economic agents by 2024.
Speaking to journalists, Teresa Rodrigues Dias said that transforming the informal economy into a formal one is a process that must also count on the support of operators in the sector, especially in terms of fulfilling their obligations.
“We have people who accept formalisation, receive the resources, the microcredit, but then don’t fulfil their obligations, and this is why we have to appeal to citizens that they must fulfil their duties,” she noted.
According to the minister, the fishing, agriculture and domestic labour sectors are the most critical areas where there are the largest number of informal operators.
Asked about the bureaucracy that still persists in the process of formalising the Angolan economy, Teresa Rodrigues Dias acknowledged that the country’s administrative machinery was still bureaucratic.
“We can’t have any illusions; we have a country where the administrative machine is really bureaucratic, and that’s also why the government is working on simplifying administrative acts, and we couldn’t say that in the case of the PREI, it still isn’t,” she emphasised.
The PREI, coordinated by the Ministry of Economy and Planning, is co-financed by the government, the European Union and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and has ten integrated public services.
The civil identification registry, the tax administration, the single window, the National Institute for Supporting Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, the National Institute for Social Security, the National Institute for Employment and Vocational Training and others are all part of PREI.
FIREI runs until Wednesday in the Angolan capital and brings together various Angolan and foreign experts to discuss the formalisation of the economy.
Source: Macau Business