ANGOLA
According to the Portuguese magazine Visão, other Angolan investments in Portugal include the civil engineering companies COBA and Contrutora do Tâmega, amongst many others.
The sum total of these investments still has minimal impact on the GDP of Portugal. Angola remains more important as a foreign market than a source of cash flow.
This attitude could be subject to change – the market for goods made in Lisbon may wane due to the growth of Angolan industries. Consequently, Portuguese institutions treat Angola with a certain care to ensure the longevity of the relationship.
This is what made the Portuguese newspaper Expresso’ s article investigating the nature of Angolan investments in the country so unusual. Shortly afterwards, the government-controlled Jornal de Angola responded with an editorial piece calling for Angolan businessmen to stop investing in Portugal.
The drama was short lived and inconsequential, a public stance for the sake of façade. The year 2012 saw Isabel dos Santos invest more money in Portugal than she had ever done before. Other investors quickly followed suit, as privately revealed to a Lisbon based investigative journalist who asked not to be named.
It is difficult to estimate the quantity of Angolan money that is present in the Portuguese economy as many investments enter the country through shielded offshore companies. In addition, the opposition claims that Angolan currency is being covertly brought into Lisbon through illegal means.
In an interview this month for the Portuguese channel SIC Notícias, the leader of UNITA, Angola’ s sole opposition party, highlighted this issue. Isaías Samakuva said:“ Tales about bags of Angolan cash being unloaded in Lisbon are almost daily stories in Angola.”
For this reason, Samakuva announced that his party will instigate a legal investigation into the origin and the destination of this money.“ It’ s in the interest of President José Eduardo dos Santos to be freed from such accusations if they are not proved,” said the Angolan politician.
The origin of Angolan money is not entirely a mystery; oil production generates 95 percent of the country’ s GDP. Huge revenues also come from the diamond industry of the Lunda region in the northeast. Exposed by the Angolan journalist Rafael Marques in his book, Diamantes de Sangue, the system of violence and semislavery involved in this business is now well known.
Technically, the origin of the capital is not a mystery, unlike its route from hands of the state to those of private investors. Marques explains:“ Angolan government
officials often take advantage of their office for improving their business dealings. Several public officials openly overlap their private interests over their public duties”.
With regard to the destination of Angolan foreign expenditure, there is some investment in Brazil, Venezuela, Mozambique, and São Tomé, but the greater part is in Portugal. Such specific concentration of spending could suggest motives of revenge, of‘ turning the tables’ after centuries of colonial domination.
Shrikesh Laxmidas, Reuters correspondent for Angola, believes this might be one of the factors that provoked the process a few years ago, but that it is not the key motivation any longer. Laxmidas says that the current low prices of Portuguese assets encourages investment in the pursuit of profit at a later stage.
The most important incentive however, is of a strategic nature. Angolan investors are mainly buying into companies that have a presence in Angola as well.“ In a way they are defending their own territory,” Laxmidas explains.“ Sonangol investment in BCP is not only due to the latter’ s presence in Angola, but it’ s a factor. Controlling the bank in Lisbon means also supervising the action of that bank in Angola.”
For this same reason, no foreign investor is allowed to own more than 49 per cent of any Angolan companies. The only exception is the Banco Espirito Santo, which still owns more than 50 per cent of its Luanda branch. But the Angolan government is leading a war to regain control of this very last legacy of the colonial era.
flags of angola and portugal emilio matías
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