Eduardo González
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced yesterday in Angola that Spain is going to increase by 200 million euros the coverage of the official export insurance to the African country to help increase the investments of Spanish companies, while he invited the Angolan President, João Lourenço, to visit our country.
Sánchez yesterday made the first stage of his tour of Angola and Senegal, in which he travels accompanied by a large group of Spanish businessmen. Yesterday began with the celebration of the Spain-Angola Business Forum at the Epic Sana Hotel in Luanda, in whose inauguration the head of the Executive highlighted the “great international experience” of Spanish companies in the fields of transport, infrastructure, engineering or energy and recalled that, in the almost 35 years that Spain has been supporting Angola with bilateral financing, Spanish companies have participated in the economic and social development of the country, “and we will continue to do so”.
In this regard, according to Moncloa, Sánchez announced during the business meeting that the Spanish Government will increase by 200 million euros the official export insurance coverage in Angola through the Compañía Española de Seguros de Crédito a la Exportación (CESCE, majority-owned by the State and by the main Spanish banking groups and insurance companies), in order to promote the arrival of more productive investments by Spanish companies in this African country.
After the business forum, Sánchez held a meeting with President João Lourenço in which an Air Transport agreement and three memorandums of understanding were signed to deepen cooperation in agricultural, fishing and industrial matters and in which the creation of a Spanish-Angolan investment observatory was agreed.
Subsequently, the two leaders issued a joint statement in which they expressed their willingness to develop a “permanent dialogue” and their desire to “deepen bilateral cooperation to strengthen the ties between the Angolan and Spanish peoples”. Likewise, the Angolan President praised “the growing attention that Spain has been paying to its relationship with Africa”, referred to Spain as “a fundamental partner of reference in the European Union” and stressed that the Spanish strategy of dialogue based on “the convergence of interests and the complementarity of capacities” can “become a pattern for existing relations not only with Angola, but also with the rest of Africa“.
In the same joint statement, the two presidents welcomed “the excellent collaboration between the two countries and pledged to “continue promoting the increase of bilateral programs and projects in sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, energy and mines, industry, tourism and transport, among others, within the framework of the diversification of Angola’s economy and development”, while the head of the Spanish Executive praised “Angola’s diplomatic initiatives to maintain regional peace and stability and promote the integration and economic development of the African continent”.
Finally, Pedro Sánchez conveyed an invitation to President João Lourenço to “visit the Kingdom of Spain, which was accepted with great pleasure, the date of this visit being pending to be arranged through the appropriate diplomatic channel“, concludes the joint statement.
Yesterday ended with two visits by the President of the Government to the electrical substation of Elecnor, a Spanish company with more than 30 years of presence in Angola, and to the Salesianos Don Bosco School, in the Luanda neighborhood of Lixeira, directed by the Spanish priest Manuel Ordóñez, whose activities are especially aimed at literacy, vocational training and care for minors at risk.
Pedro Sánchez, the first Spanish Prime Minister to visit Angola since Felipe González in 1992, is accompanied by representatives of the companies Elecnor, AEE Power, Airbus, TSK, Riu, Satec, Globaltec Desarrollos e Ingeniería, Redondo y García, Impulso y Consultoría and Grupo AGEM. According to Moncloa, Angola (a priority country in the III Africa Plan and the Africa 2023 Focus) has great economic potential and the diversification program launched by its government to reduce dependence on oil offers great opportunities for Spanish companies in sectors such as infrastructure, transport and energy. Lourenço himself expressly mentioned Spain (and other countries) during his inauguration speech in 2017, in which he invited Spanish investors to participate in his government’s economic diversification and privatization process.
