The
President of the African Group and Minister of Finance of Angola,
Armando Manuel, declared in the welcoming speech to the participants at
the Luanda Caucus- 2015 meeting.
“This
obliges us to look for other sources of financing including savings
that can be made from restricting illicit financial flows from Africa,
especially measures that can be taken to radically reduce these mass
monetary outflows and guarantee that they are used for development in
the African continent”, he noted.
Meanwhile,
David Robinson, the Vice-Director of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), and one of the speakers at the African Caucus said that the fall
in oil prices is a significant negative shock for the oil exporting
countries which have had to make marked adjustments.
David
Robinson, who presented the theme “Africa: Regional Economic Outlooks”
pointed to the following public financial measures: budget cuts in
the 2015 expenditure, above all in investments, fuel subsidies reform,
taxation measures, including tax rate increases, and greater exchange
rate flexibility wherever possible.
Indeed,
the representative of the IMF to the African Caucus noted that the oil
producing countries have to tackle issues such as the orderly
implementation of spending cuts, prioritise social sectors and
infrastructure and mobilise non-oil revenues. It is necessary to address
low liquidity in the foreign exchange markets in countries with
flexible arrangements and the absence of foreign exchange instruments in
countries whose currency is indexed to the Euro.
The
emphasis of this Thursday afternoon fell on combatting illicit
financial flows to improve the mobilisation of internal resources, a
topic addressed by Thabo Mbeki, the Ex-President of South Africa.
The
forum assembles more than nineteen Ministers of Finance and fourteen
Governors of the Central Banks representing approximately forty member
countries of the African Caucus, including Angola.
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