Angola’s 2027 Budget and the Comforting Illusion of Numbers
Angola’s proposed 2027 budget deserves one compliment before the questions begin. The Finance Ministry has made its documentation available online with commendable transparency and technical clarity. Readers can examine the government’s assumptions. Whether those assumptions describe the country they live in is another matter. The first difficulty concerns political power. Parliamentary approval will leave the president with considerable discretion to reshape the budget throughout the year. Under Articles 4 through 6 of the proposed law, he may move funds between budget lines, adjust allocations, supplement spending with additional revenue and replace projects making little progress with others he considers strategic. He may also borrow at home and abroad, issue public debt, renegotiate existing obligations and refinance them. Such extensive powers allow him to redefine spending priorities after legislators have approved them. The budget becomes a broad statement of intentions, subject to presidential revision. Parliamentary authorization offers less certainty than the […]
Read more