Angola’s
2013 budget has been hailed by government propaganda as its greatest ever,
owing to how much is being spent on social sectors and in the fight against
poverty. The State Budget Bill, approved by the National Assembly on January
15, is expected to become law on February 14.
Spending
this year is up some 50 percent from 2012, taking the overall budget to a
record high of AKZ 6.6 trillion (around US $ 69 billion).
In fact,
33.5 percent, over one third of the budget, is allocated for the “social sector,”
which includes health, education, housing, environment, and social protection.
It is also true that more is being spent on the “social sector” than ever
before.
But the
headline numbers are misleading. Moreover, focusing on the figures fails to
notice that, in essence, the State Budget Bill legalizes in fact presidential
unaccountability in the management of the public resources.
The legal
provision on Spending and Special Funds establishes a special regime for the
budget execution, accountability, and “special spending” related to the
sovereign bodies and public services that carry out internal and external
intelligence services tasks.
In
essence, all functions of the state are subordinated to the maintenance of a
generalized culture of fear and suspicions. Thus, citizens in the public sector
and beyond are enlisted into spying against each other for the regime’s
survival.
Furthermore,
the same provision earmarks credits, on the state budget, aimed at setting up
special funds “to work as strategic reserves of the state” for expenditures on
intelligence.
Then, the
management and accountability of the special funds, according to the draft law,
is to be exclusively regulated by the President of the Republic, in his
capacity as head of government. In simple terms, the president gets a legal
authorization to self-regulate himself, as chief-executor of the budget, in a
novel way of establishing checks and balances.
For the
first in a series of articles on the 2013 budget, Maka Angola addresses the
presidential spending, as well as the military and security budgets, and
compares them to social spending.
Soldiers and Guns for the President
Soldiers and Guns for the President
The
Presidency alone has a budget of US $1.8 billion, which is more than the funds
for the Ministry of Health (US $1.5 billion). Of this sum, José Eduardo dos
Santos will personally spend US $1.4 billion on military defense, which
accounts for 81 percent of the presidential palace expenditures. The
President’s personal arrangements for the defense might suggest that he is feeling
more unsecure or that he is running a parallel presidential army.
Overlooked
by many in the budget, is the US $67.9 million Dos Santos will spend on paying
his paramilitary personnel. Besides this budget item, there is more US $150.2
million allocated to the members of the Presidential Guard Unit (UGP) and the
Presidential Security Unit (USP). An average presidential guard has a salary of
up to US $1,050 a month, and the average calculations suggest that Dos Santos
still has on its payroll a dedicated presidential force of over 11,000 men. The
salary of a UGP soldier is five times more than that of an average army
soldier.
But in
terms of keeping the reins of the presidential palace, it is not all about
armed personnel. Public relations are also an important part of Dos Santos’
strategy. The presidency has an overall budget of US $49 million for marketing,
up from the $40 million in the 2012 budget, which were all allocated to a
private company, Semba Comunicação, belonging to two of Dos Santos’ children.
So, the Dos Santos’ family sought to promote the patriarch and the country’s
image by showcasing how open they are about nepotism and corruption. Yet, all
this money has not enabled the Presidency to update its website regularly. The
Ministry of Social Communication, whose job is to control the state media and
the government’s image, has less than half of the presidency’s amount for
marketing, and it cannot run its website either.
Defending
the Country
As far as
the defense and public order are concerned, both account for 17.6 percent of
the country’s total budget, up from 15.1 percent in 2012, while social sector
spending has only increased 0.6 percent in the same period. The Ministry of
Defense has the largest budget of all, at US $ 5.7 billion, while the Interior
Ministry has a total planned spending of US $4.7 billion.
In spite
of the largesse on defense and homeland security spending, which keeps
increasing in times of peace, the funds barely trickle down to those who most
need them – soldiers and police officers. Despite all the cash flowing, the
army has difficulties in paying its pensioners and war veterans who have been
regularly staging small protests to demand what is owed to them. The Angolan
Armed Forces has an extremely high rate of tuberculosis among its rank and file
due to the lack of basic living conditions in the barracks. In the provinces,
many garrisons are still largely made of straw and mud quarters. The situation
of the police forces, particularly in the provinces, is also dire, as anyone
who has driven throughout Angola will attest, knowing how many times he or she
must make a “contribution” to a hungry officer who cannot afford his children’
school fees.
Maka
Angola has been researching the distribution of food supplies to the army and
the police, and it has been finding that most contracts, ranging from tens of
millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, are awarded to phony companies
belonging to senior generals, government officials and their cronies who often
do not deliver the goods.
Comparatively,
a closer look reveals that of the 33.5 percent allocated to social spending,
health only gets 5.29 percent and education 8.09 percent, totaling 13.38
percent. The Presidency’s own budget remains much higher than the funds
allocated to the entire health sector, which receives US $1.3 billion
Elsewhere
in Africa, while few governments meet the Abuja Declaration’s commitment to
spend 15 percent of their budget on health, several do spend over 10 percent
and many commit as much as a quarter of all spending to education. It is a
shame for Angola that countries like Cote d’Ivoire, torn by a recent conflict,
spends 30 percent of its budget on education. Very small and rather poor
countries like Swaziland, Lesotho and Burkina Faso, spend 24, 17 and 16.8
percent of their total budgets, respectively, on education. Angola, as the
second largest oil producer in Africa, and with a regime obsessed with the idea
of being a regional power, cannot dream of competing with South Africa, which
spends a quarter of its budget on education, or Ghana that exceeds the 30
percent threshold.
More
for Spooks, Less for Agriculture
The
contradictions on spending surpass any reasonable understanding. For instance,
the government continues to promote the idea of diversifying the economy to
break the dependency from oil, which accounts for more than 95 percent of the
country’s exports. But these stated goals are contradicted by the fact that the
Intelligence and Security Services (SINSE) has US$ 695 million at its disposal,
while the Ministry of Agriculture gets a lower budget of US $611 million.
Angola has a great potential to be a competitive exporter of agricultural
produce for it is endowed with some of the most fertile soils and water
resources in Africa. Nevertheless, spooking is the priority.
By the
same set of priorities, spying abroad is more important than having a coherent
foreign policy. The Foreign Intelligence Services (SIE) has an allocation of up
US$ 340 million for intelligence gathering abroad alone, while the entire
budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is US $380.4 million.
Angolan
embassies abroad are a nightmare to deal with, either by Angolan or foreign
nationals, due to the distressing levels of staff incompetence, arrogance and
lack of guidance on clear policies towards their host countries and their own
citizens. China is the exception, due to its overwhelming role on Angola’s
national reconstruction. A recent report by the Angolan Embassy in Beijing,
stated it had issued over 221,000 visas to Chinese nationals in the last six
months. Prior to this period there were already, according to official data,
over 258,000 Chinese nationals working and living in Angola.
It is
possible that the bulk of the funds earmarked for spying abroad are for outsourcing
intelligence services to international profiteers at unreasonable costs. What
is certainly questionable is the Angolan government’s own legitimacy to engage
in such large-scale and expensive operation, as this budget would suggest.
The
rationale for development, often hailed by the regime, also does not make sense
when it comes to its priorities in the distribution of resources. Seven of
Angola’s 18 provinces have lower or similar budgets than that allocated to the
Foreign Intelligence Services. Lunda-Sul (0,40%), Namibe (0.41%), Zaire
(0.42%), Kwanza-Norte (0.46%), Cunene (0.48%), Bengo (0.50%) and Kuando-Kubango
(0.57%) also benefit from Public Investment Programs managed from the capital
Luanda, but when implemented, do not add that much to the overall expenditures
in the abovementioned provinces. They remain lesser important than the foreign
adventures of the regime, which is apparently investing more on rather
expensive gadgets and assignments than the fictional James Bond and his crew.
But it is more
likely that the money is being used by Dos Santos to bankroll his trademark
conversion of national money into honeypots for high ranking and privileged
officers of the army, police and security services. These officers gorge
themselves on ill-gotten wealth plundered from state coffers in return for
their complicity, support and silence. Angola’s development will have to wait
for Dos Santos to go.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário