logo
IMF cuts Angola's 2025 growth forecast to 2.4% on emerging risks

IMF cuts Angola's 2025 growth forecast to 2.4% on emerging risks

NAIROBI: The International Monetary Fund has cut Angola's preliminary growth outlook for 2025 to 2.4% from an initial 3%, it said after an assessment mission to Luanda, citing lower prices of oil and tightening external financing conditions.
The Southern African oil exporter had to pay $200 million as extra security for a $1 billion loan from JPMorgan during the height of the selloff of risky assets last month, exposing the challenges faced by small, open African economies.
'This downward revision to the outlook also poses risks to fiscal performance,' the Fund said in a statement, adding that the findings will be discussed by its board in July.
The team, was however, reassured by the government's determination to contain emerging risks, and to put in place mitigating measures, it said in a statement late on Tuesday.
The IMF officials were on a mission known as Post Financing Assessment, which is reserved for nations with outstanding credit above their quotas that do not have an IMF-supported programme or a staff-monitored programme.
IMF talks begin today
The Fund sent a separate statement saying its head of Africa department, Abebe Aemro Selassie, had met with Angola's President Joao Lourenco in Luanda, to discuss the situation.
'I emphasised the IMF's readiness to continue supporting Angola's efforts,' the statement quoted Abebe as saying after the meeting.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Fragmented climate funding in KP: a costly gamble
Fragmented climate funding in KP: a costly gamble

Business Recorder

time6 hours ago

  • Business Recorder

Fragmented climate funding in KP: a costly gamble

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has now endured two climate catastrophes in just three years, and the scale is staggering. In August 2025 alone, flash floods claimed 327 lives, including 158 deaths in Buner in a single week, while more than 1,600 buildings were damaged, 428 livestock lost, and entire tourist families swept away in Swat. These tragedies echo the devastation of 2022, when over 600,000 people were displaced, 7,700 cattle killed, and 326,000 homes destroyed; it is a vivid proof that this cycle is no longer an anomaly but a deepening pattern of climate vulnerability. Pakistan has faced this magnitude before. In 2010, record monsoon rains submerged one-fifth of the country, directly affecting 20 million people, killing nearly 2,000, and inflicting over USD 40 billion in damages to infrastructure, agriculture, and industry. Yet, despite these mounting disasters, KP's climate finance remains fragmented. The province has earmarked billions: Rs 41.1 billion for mitigation and Rs 93.7 billion for adaptation in its 2023-24 budget. On paper, these are impressive figures. In practice, however, this funding risks becoming a costly gamble: poorly tracked, scattered across departments, and dangerously out of sync with escalating risks. The costs of inaction are already visible. Climate shocks are overwhelming local capacity, from catastrophic floods to urban health crises like rising dengue cases in Peshawar, driven by hotter temperatures, erratic rainfall, and higher humidity. In other words, volatility is not just destroying infrastructure, it is driving up health costs and straining already stretched public services. The question is not whether KP is spending money, but whether it is spending it wisely. While mitigation funds are spread across sectors such as forestry, transport, and waste management, there is no central 'climate budget.' This invisibility makes it nearly impossible to track where money goes or how effective it is. Projects that clearly contribute to resilience, say in irrigation or health, are not labelled as climate-related, meaning they cannot be reported domestically or to international funders. This is more than an accounting issue. Pakistan's own National Climate Change Policy (NCCP) and National Adaptation Plan (NAP) stress the need for traceable and transparent financing. By ignoring this, KP not only weakens accountability but also cuts itself off from potential external support. At the national level, reforms are moving in the opposite direction. With support from the IMF, Pakistan has rolled out Climate Budget Tagging (CBT), which integrates climate classification into the federal budget process. A new form, III-C, now tracks climate-related subsidies and programs across ministries. The results are telling. The federal government allocated Rs. 603 billion for mitigation in 2025-26, up 183 percent from the previous year, and Rs 85.4 billion for adaptation, up 83 percent. These are not just inflated figures: they are tagged, traceable, and reportable to international partners like the Green Climate Fund (GCF). This transparency has already improved Pakistan's credibility with global climate finance institutions. In contrast, KP has no such system. Without tagging or a climate-aware financial management framework, even well-intentioned projects risk disappearing into a policy blind spot. The province cannot demonstrate alignment with national priorities, nor can it credibly pitch to global funds. This blind spot is particularly dangerous in a province as climate vulnerable as KP. Floods, forest degradation, and health emergencies are escalating. Without transparent budgeting, every rupee spent on risks becoming a missed opportunity, one that could otherwise attract external finance, build resilience, and reduce losses. For KP, the path forward is clear. The province must adopt climate budget tagging across departments, taking lessons from the federal government's recent reforms, so that climate-related expenditures are visible and traceable. Allocations should be aligned with national frameworks such as the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) and National Climate Change Policy (NCCP), ensuring consistency and coherence with Pakistan's broader climate strategy. Equally important is the disclosure and centralization of climate spending to strengthen accountability and enable external financing opportunities. Departments need to be integrated so that climate action is not scattered across silos but coordinated toward shared outcomes. Climate change is not waiting, and KP cannot afford to either. In a province where over 300 lives were lost in a single season of floods and dengue cases continue to rise, fragmented financing is no longer a bureaucratic flaw. It is a gamble with people's lives. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025

Tariff stability or illusion? The real test of Pakistan's power reforms
Tariff stability or illusion? The real test of Pakistan's power reforms

Business Recorder

time9 hours ago

  • Business Recorder

Tariff stability or illusion? The real test of Pakistan's power reforms

The specter of circular debt that has been haunting Pakistan's power sector for a long time, seems to be partly stabilized with a total stock standing at Rs 1.614 trillion as of June 2025 (Ministry of Energy, 2025). It represents a significant cut over last year (2022–23), which was Rs 2.393 trillion from prior FY, a decline of Rs 780 billion. Over the first 16 months of the incumbent government (March 2024–June 2025), the debt was brought down from Rs 2.679 trillion to Rs 1.614 trillion — a drop of about Rs 1.065 trillion (Ministry of Finance, 2025). This unanticipated advancement is firstly the result of the breakthrough deal made by the Government of Pakistan with 18 leading commercial banks for Rs 1.275 trillion Islamic financing. The government is now expected to repay this facility in 24 quarterly instalments over six years, at a rate linked to the three-month KIBOR minus 0.9 percent (Pakistan Banks Association, PBA). The payments would retire Rs 683 billion payable to Power Holding Limited (PHL) and clear arrears of Rs 569 billion worth to Independent Power Producers (IPPs), bringing down the sector's circular debt to around Rs 561 billion. Secondly, the systematic policy given by the Finance Ministry to allow the Debt Service Surcharge (DSS) of Rs 3.23/kWh to be utilized only for debt servicing, which not only brought fiscal transparency but also seriousness to the unprecedented government finances. Prior to these measures, earlier in the fiscal year 2024-25 (FY25), circular debt had been recorded at Rs 2.4 trillion (approximately) by end-March 2025. Yet, this doesn't indicate that the consumers will now enjoy tariff reductions. While a financial injection by the government may be the short-term solution to prevent the crisis in it still doesn't solve the circular debt problem. Even if it relieves some political pressure today, the cost will ultimately be passed directly on to the consumer — through future bills and tariffs, i.e., the Debt Service Surcharge (DSS) of Rs 3.23 per unit for the next six years. While the loan may stave off pressure in the near term, unless these fundamental inefficiencies —losses, low levels of billing and a monolithic fixed cost structure — are tackled head-on, they will continue to weigh on the sector. Moreover, due to the IMF's stringent cost-recovery mandates, electricity prices will continue to be burdened by internal system inefficiencies. The IMF has demanded the end of a previous 10 percent ceiling on this surcharge, ensuring ultimately increased bills for users. The already beleaguered power sector is heading for some short-term relief and long-term pain. The power sector is still plagued by high non-technical and technical losses in transmission and distribution, poor collection of overdue bills, an unbalanced cross-subsidy structure, the dependence on imported fuels, and the stagnation of new domestic power generation. Unless there are drastic changes in DISCO performance, loss reduction and bill recovery measures, the borrowing will reemerge. The consequences for ordinary consumers are straightforward: years of increased electricity bills and levies to pay for the bailout. The July debt deal is, in essence, an unavoidable but uneasy solution. The implications are very clear: years of elevated electricity tariffs and surcharges that will finance the bailout but do little to fix systemic inefficiencies. While this does provide some breathing room for the power sector, it will be paid for by households and industry for years to come. Unless governance reforms, infrastructure upgrades, and accountability in distribution companies are pursued in parallel, this relief package may simply reset the clock on a recurring crisis. In the absence of a decisive action to upgrade grid and enforcement aggressively on the usage of non-fossil fuel generation, energy revenues, governance on profit and cost regulation, and the industry's short-sighted dependence on circular debt will continue to erode any recent achievements. The government action has bought itself time and credibility for the time being– but real test lies ahead: can Pakistan turn this fleeting fix into a sustainable, cost-effective power future? Copyright Business Recorder, 2025

IMF pushes for oversight of MPs' schemes
IMF pushes for oversight of MPs' schemes

Express Tribune

time9 hours ago

  • Express Tribune

IMF pushes for oversight of MPs' schemes

The International Monetary Fund has asked Pakistan to spend money on the parliamentarians' projects through regular approval processes by abandoning a special treatment and again urged to avoid mid-year budget adjustments without prior approval of parliament. The IMF has also emphasised the importance of a budget strategy paper by recommending its publication six months before the presentation of the budget in a move that runs contrary to the finance ministry's practice of not timely publishing the strategy documents. To enhance transparency, efficiency and affordability of the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), there is a need to integrate parliamentarians' projects into the PSDP process, stated the IMF in its Governance and Corruption Diagnosis Assessment report. The government is supposed to officially release the report by the end of this month. Unlike the approval of any project by the Central Development Working Party or the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council, the parliamentarians' schemes are approved by a Steering Committee on SDGs Achievements Programme without much scrutiny. Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar chairs the steering committee. These are small-scale schemes of community welfare, which also fall in the domain of the local governments barring the provision of electricity and gas. In the last fiscal year, the government had spent at least Rs61 billion on the parliamentarians' schemes and Rs70 billion has been allocated for the current fiscal year for these small-scale projects. There have also been voices from within the country against spending on these schemes outside PSDP, which can cause wastage and less spending on the ground than the approved budgets. The IMF has also recommended limiting the PSDP allocations for new projects to only 10% of the total allocations in order to avoid thinning out already sacred resources. There is a tendency in every government to announce and approve new projects despite the fact that the existing projects require over a decade for completion due to limited resources. The IMF has asked the Ministry of Planning to rationalize the PSDP portfolio by retaining only high priority projects. The political expediency has distorted the PSDP allocations and the federal government spends on the projects, which are in the areas that are not even the responsibility of the center. The government has also been running small schemes through the PSDP and funds allocated for these projects are also often misused. The planning ministry did not comment on this article. Pakistan's overall public finance management remains weak and there is also a little appetite in the government for ensuring transparency and involving the cabinet and the Parliament in the pre-budget discussions. The Ministry of Finance this year did not take the Budget Strategy Paper to the federal cabinet for its approval in violation of an Act of the Parliament. However, the IMF has recommended that the Finance Ministry should advance the calendar of presenting and publishing the budget strategy paper to January and include macroeconomic and fiscal indicators in these papers. The budget is presented in June. The global lender has further recommended that the government should also analyze the accuracy of previous macroeconomic forecasts and budget estimates after the end of the fiscal year. The IMF, which since long has been urging Islamabad to abandon the tool of supplementary grants, again asked the government to respect Parliament's supremacy. It has recommended that the government should avoid mid-year budget adjustments without getting the Parliament's prior approval. In order to meet unexpected expenditures like natural disasters the IMF has recommended maintaining a contingency pool for such spending. Currently, the government issues supplementary grants during the course of the fiscal year and gets the ex-post facto approval of the spending from the Parliament. Sometimes there are unforeseen expenses like the Rs5.8 billion allocation for flood-affected areas of the country on Tuesday. But there has also been a practice to defer some expenditure at the time of approval of the budget to keep the overall size limited to the requirement of the IMF. For instance, the Finance Ministry did not approve a subsidy for foreign remittances scheme in the budget due to limited space available. However, after the intervention of the Prime Minister's Office, it authorized a Rs30 billion supplementary grant a few days ago out of the contingency expenditure pool. The fiscal year has just begun and the government has already started the process of giving supplementary grants to various ministries. The Economic Coordination Committee on Tuesday approved a supplementary grant of Rs250 million for the National Security Division for its Strategic Policy Planning Cell. The expenses on setting up the cell should have been made part of the regular budget approved in June. The ECC on Tuesday, on a proposal from the Finance Division, also approved the subsidy for RAAST QR Code based person-to-merchant payments to the tune of Rs3.5 billion. In another important recommendation, the IMF has proposed to amend the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority law and rules to bring an end to preference in procurements for the state-owned entities and charitable organizations. It has urged the government to bring these changes aimed at ensuring transparency, efficiency and accountability in the public procurement process.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store