3. The Importance of Infrastructure Governance
Getting value for money from infrastructure investment, and using such investment to stimulate inclusive economic growth, is challenging even for advanced economies. The extent to which this is feasible is closely related to the quality of governance and institutions in the country concerned, which is key to determining which projects are selected and how they are delivered.36 As noted by the OECD in 2015, ‘Poor governance is the major reason why infrastructure projects fail to meet their timeframe, budget and service delivery objectives.’37 This was reiterated in a more recent OECD publication outlining 10 key governance challenges and policy options for getting infrastructure governance right.38 Hart, Krause and Miller link the quality of infrastructure investment and delivery to the quality of government. They assert that public investment management reforms represent a first step in developing sector-specific reforms geared towards infrastructure outcomes.39
In a 2014 report, the World Bank defined the eight ‘must have’ steps in an efficient public investment system. These were: (1) investment guidance, project development and preliminary screening; (2) formal project appraisal; (3) independent review and appraisal; (4) project selection and budgeting; (5) project implementation; (6) project adjustment; (7) facility operation; and (8) basic completion review and evaluation. Angola featured in one of 36 country case studies in the report, and was in the sub-group classified as natural resource-dependent states.40
In 2015, the IMF followed up on this work with a paper providing guidelines for public investment efficiency, defined as ‘… the relationship between the value of the public capital stock and the measured coverage and quality of infrastructure assets’.41 Using a new Public Investment Efficiency Indicator (PIE-X) that estimates the relationship between the public capital stock and indicators of access to and quality of infrastructure assets, the paper assigns countries scores of between 0 and 1 in accordance with their distance from an ‘efficiency frontier’ of best-performing countries. The paper estimates average efficiency losses for public investments across more than 100 countries at 27 per cent (measured as the distance between the average country and the frontier for a given level of public capital stock and income per capita). Low-income developing countries (LIDCs) have a larger efficiency gap of 40 per cent.42 Within the sub-groups of the study, there are variations on these averages: countries with weak institutions and high perceived levels of rent-seeking and corruption have correspondingly wider efficiency gaps. The IMF argues that strengthening the institutional framework for public investments would significantly improve their efficiency, and has highlighted 15 areas or ‘institutions’ that it considers key to progress. These form a Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA) framework and are grouped under three headings: ‘planning’, ‘allocating’ and ‘implementing’ (see Box 1).
Institutional contexts vary from country to country, and therefore so do the areas in which institutional improvements could yield the biggest efficiency gains. Generally speaking, the IMF paper finds that institutions related to the funding, management and monitoring of project implementation are weakest in LIDCs, and that priority should therefore be given to strengthening these areas.43
Box 1: The IMF’s PIMA framework
Planning
1. Fiscal rules
2. National and sectoral planning
3. Centre–local coordination
4. Management of public–private partnerships (PPPs)
5. Company regulation
Allocating
6. Multi-year budgeting
7. Budget comprehensiveness
8. Budget unity
9. Project appraisal
10. Project selection
Implementing
11. Protection of investment
12. Availability of funding
13. Transparency of execution
14. Project management
15. Monitoring of assets
Public investment management in Angola
According to a former senior government representative, the Angolan authorities have been overambitious in their infrastructure planning, not taking into consideration issues such as feasibility, absorption capacity or corruption risks.44 This flawed approach has been sustained by high commodity prices and exacerbated by weak institutions. To understand why the country’s significant investments in infrastructure over the past 15 years have offered limited value for money, it is necessary to scrutinize the institutions involved in infrastructure governance throughout the planning, resource allocation and implementation phases. The PIMA framework provides a useful analytical tool for doing so, notwithstanding the relatively general level of analysis possible within the scope of this paper.45
Planning
Box 1 lists the 15 institutions in the PIMA framework, starting with the five deemed important for planning.
The first requirement is the existence of fiscal rules: regulations that bind a country’s authorities to managing its resources in accordance with specified criteria, typically defined through the country’s budgetary framework. The fiscal rules most relevant to the Angolan context concern the management and use of resource revenue, framed so as to mitigate the highly pro-cyclical nature of public investments in the country. The government started addressing the regulatory framework for resource revenue management only in 2011. An oil price differentials account (Fundo do Diferencial do Preço do Petróleo), a reserve for infrastructure investments (Reserva Estratégica Financeira Petrolífera para Infraestruturas) and an investment fund (Fundo Soberano de Angola) were established at this time. The three mechanisms were kept separate, with the differentials account and reserve set up as sub-accounts within the central bank and the investment fund formed as a sovereign wealth fund (SWF). Institutions are only as strong as the political will to use them effectively, however, and the two most important mechanisms in terms of oil revenue stabilization – the differentials account and the infrastructure reserve – were set up too late, with inadequate savings targets that were poorly enforced. Just before the onset of the economic and fiscal crisis in July 2014, only US$480 million had been accumulated in the differentials account, while the infrastructure reserve contained US$1.8 billion; the SWF, meanwhile, relied on an initial endowment of US$5 billion.46 By comparison, overall national budgeted expenditure in 2014 amounted to US$54.7 billion, with 73 per cent of budgeted revenue deriving from oil. The effectiveness of the differentials account relative to a budget of this size would be extremely limited.
Institutions are only as strong as the political will to use them effectively, however, and the two most important mechanisms in terms of oil revenue stabilization – the differentials account and the infrastructure reserve – were set up too late, with inadequate savings targets that were poorly enforced.
Had regulations on public investment been put in place in 2005, with a conservative oil price incorporated in budget assumptions and windfall oil revenues saved to a stabilization fund, the disruption caused by the 2008–10 crisis – when public investment dropped to 4 per cent of GDP (see Figure 1) – could have been prevented or mitigated. Such measures would also have improved the government’s ability to tackle the crisis caused by the drop in oil prices in the second half of 2014.47 The IMF, moreover, had already recommended the establishment of an SWF/oil fund as part of its negotiations for its 2010 Stand-By Arrangement with Angola, but has claimed that ‘… the authorities were unconvinced of the case for anchoring fiscal policy around a rule that smoothed inter-temporal consumption from oil wealth’.48 In a 2012 Article IV and post-programme monitoring report, the IMF warned against a ‘spend as you go’ approach versus a stabilization fund model. The IMF’s calculations showed that if Angola were to face an external shock of the magnitude of the 2008–10 global financial crisis, public investment would drop dramatically, from around 10 per cent of GDP to 5 per cent of GDP. As it transpired, this was very close to what actually happened, although the drop may prove to have been even steeper when figures on actual spending for 2015 and 2016 become available. If a stabilization fund had been in place, the higher oil prices of 2010–14 could have been used to keep the level of public investment at around 10–12 per cent of GDP for a number of years, or at least to prevent public debt from increasing as rapidly.49 Another factor is that a strong correlation exists between oil prices and prices of bitumen (asphalt), a key material in road construction.50 Spreading spending counter-cyclically over a number of years could have allowed funds for road construction and repair to stretch further and offer increased value for money.
According to the IMF, LIDCs generally perform as well as emerging and advanced economies in terms of national and sectoral planning.51 Angola’s planning history and the content of its most recent NDP support this finding, notwithstanding the aforementioned weaknesses in the country’s planning framework and practices. As mentioned, a series of two-year government plans had been in place since 2003. In 2008 these were upgraded to five-year plans, setting out strategic priorities and policies for every sector. The problem is that the 2013–17 NDP was overambitious, unrealistically costed and poorly linked to annual public investment planning and budgeting. Nor did it entertain the possibility of the sort of external shocks to which an economy dependent on oil revenue is susceptible. Nonetheless, the government’s commitment to planning and the experience policymakers have gained provide a good foundation on which to build, as a more challenging outlook for resource revenue forces the setting of targets that are more realistic and more capable of accommodating external shocks. The 2018–22 planning cycle represents an opportunity for Angola to put lessons learned into effect, and to establish more strategic and policy-driven national development plans.
Private capital and public–private partnerships (PPPs) have not yet featured to any significant extent in Angola’s infrastructure investment landscape. Until recently, oil revenues and credit lines (i.e. sovereign debt) were considered to provide sufficient financing, so there was little perceived need or appetite for private-sector funding. This may now be changing.52 A law on PPPs was approved in January 2011 (Law No. 2/11 of 14 January) after being put on the agenda in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The legal framework for the PPP law is inspired by the Portuguese experience, which, as in most other countries, has been mixed at best. It is by no means guaranteed that in the current context Angola will be able to use PPPs to attract private capital. The authorities are aware of these issues, but as the country’s economic problems deepen, the desire to attract foreign investment in infrastructure delivery is increasing. However, given the current weaknesses in infrastructure governance and fiscal transparency, PPPs would carry significant risks of failure.53 Institutional investors would want to see substantial improvements in governance before daring to invest in the country. Moreover, any PPPs established in the absence of such improvements would almost certainly increase government liabilities, as private investors would seek state guarantees to compensate for higher credit risks.
Resource allocation
This cluster of institutions under the IMF’s PIMA framework (see Box 1) includes multi-year budgeting, budget comprehensiveness, budget unity, project appraisal and project selection – all features of public investment management that are vital for efficient infrastructure spending.
The government of Angola has only recently embarked on multi-year budgeting, with the IMF providing technical assistance in June 2014 and April 2015. Progress since then has been limited. While the 2016 budget included a section outlining a medium-term fiscal framework, this looked more like an analytical exercise than a framework with any practical implications. An overly abstract approach is often an issue when governments are not fully prepared or able to engage in genuine medium-term fiscal planning.54 Had a fiscal rule mandating the accumulation of financial resources and the year-on-year smoothing of expenditure been put in place, the authorities would have been in a much better position to plan and finance infrastructure investments. An additional issue is that in the past the Ministry of Finance did not set overall expenditure ceilings for public investments; these ceilings could have guided planning exercises. Addressing these gaps will be paramount if the government is to make progress in fiscal consolidation in the post-2014 economic and fiscal context.
The PIP was historically the domain of the Ministry of Planning and Territorial Development.55 For several decades this institutional set-up practically decoupled public investment planning from the national budget, limiting budget comprehensiveness. Although some improvements have been made in this area, for many years projects have been approved and financed with limited, if any, consideration of future operational and maintenance costs. The lack of coordination between plans and budgets was evident in a disjointed and incoherent approach to management, which resulted in the SIGFE and SIPIP – the two integrated systems for financial management and public investment management – being run in isolation from one another.56 According to the IMF, a working group was formed in May 2015 to address this issue, with results expected in the near future.57 Exacerbating the problem, much of the infrastructure investment that has been financed by external credit lines has occurred off-budget. Likewise, large quasi-fiscal expenditures, including on massive public infrastructure projects, have been the rule rather than the exception over the past 15 years – with Sonangol the main culprit. Although progress has been made in addressing some of these issues, a 2014 IMF report noted a deterioration in the unity and universality of the budget as a result of the omission from budget documents of details on infrastructure spending undertaken by Sonangol.58
Project appraisal and selection are further areas in need of strengthening. Years of abundant revenue have resulted in ‘… a lack of demand for project appraisal and the politicization of public investment decision making’.59 The need to address this issue was identified as a structural adjustment criterion in the IMF’s 2010 Stand-By Arrangement for Angola.60 Yet as of 2015, the issue remained on the agenda and was seen as a crucial weakness in the broader public investment management system, with the IMF finding that ‘… project appraisal capacity remains limited, complicating assessments of potential economic impact of prospective projects’.61 It is unclear if the identification of such problems is being followed up with policy advice and technical assistance from, for example, the IMF, AfDB or World Bank.
The regulatory framework for public investment is enshrined in Law No. 31/10, which sets out the sequencing of investments under the PIP in a logical and straightforward manner. The law requires economic and financial viability studies and environmental assessments to be carried out as part of project preparation (Article 14). It also establishes a methodology for the prioritization and selection of projects, based on criteria such as the severity of the problem the project aims to address, the urgency of the problem, and the probability of the situation worsening if the project is not implemented (Appendix IV).62 In practice, compliance with the legal framework has been weak. Budget units (mainly ministries and provincial governments) often submit project proposals with inadequate documentation. Approvals are often made without the required procedures being followed.63
The country’s decentralized procurement system placed the compliance burden on chronically understaffed procurement units within ministries and provincial governments.
Part of the explanation for this lies in the importance policymakers have typically attached to spending the entire public investment budget. In the economic boom years, this would have been impossible had procurement and budget execution rules been followed rigorously, as the system simply lacked sufficient capacity to process the amounts of money passing through it. Moreover, the country’s decentralized procurement system placed the compliance burden on chronically understaffed procurement units within ministries and provincial governments. Projects were not subject to preliminary feasibility studies, as this was not an upfront requirement in the early stages of the planning process. Strengthening the use of such studies could reduce the number of projects making it through to the more rigorous, costly and demanding part of the process, which could then be saved for the most viable projects. With increased incentives for better project preparation, it becomes important that efforts are made to strengthen capacity, especially in the Studies, Planning and Statistics Departments (GEPE) of line ministries and provincial governments.64
Implementation
Protection of investment, availability of funding, transparency of execution, project management and monitoring of assets are the five institutions grouped in the third cluster of the IMF’s PIMA framework (Box 1). Again, these are all relevant to understanding the difficulties in achieving value for money from infrastructure investments in Angola.
As noted, although Angola faced a daunting reconstruction task at the end of the civil war, it was in the rare position of not lacking funding. Quite the opposite was the case, as oil revenue sharply increased the financial resources available to the government. This was in contrast to the challenges facing many LIDCs, which often struggle to protect scarce funds for complex, long-term infrastructure developments. For Angola, the problem instead was that an abundance of revenue probably fostered a lax attitude to public investment management. The excess of financial resources in the early post-war years due to oil revenue essentially resulted in compliance with the legal framework for public investment being suspended, as the main objective for policymakers at that time was to increase execution rates for rapidly growing budgets. The resultant culture within the Ministry of Finance was one of paying bills without asking too many questions.
In 2009, the after-effects of the global financial crisis started to change the picture. Oil prices dropped, reducing government revenue. The result was a dramatic decline in public investment spending (see Figure 1) and the accumulation of massive arrears in payments owed to construction companies. In response, Carlos Alberto Lopes, who took over as finance minister in February 2010, started enforcing budget execution rules rigorously. However, the economy’s dependency on public expenditure meant that this approach soon became politically unviable, as it constrained growth. Lopes was replaced in May 2013 after the execution rate for PIP projects had dropped to 60 per cent.65 This led to a new period of accelerated, pro-cyclical spending on public investments – a spree that continued until the onset of the 2014 economic crisis.
A further problem is that Angola suffers from very low levels of transparency in public finances, scoring well below its regional peers in the International Budget Partnerships Open Budget Index.66 It has only been subject to one PEFA (public expenditure and financial accountability) assessment, conducted in 2016, for which the results have not yet been published.67 There is a complete lack of transparency concerning implementation of the NDP (see ‘What was achieved?’ section, above).
In terms of competitive and transparent tendering, limited progress has been made. The National Procurement Service (SNCP) has gradually started playing a role that could become important with time. The SNCP oversees public procurement, supports the identification and implementation of procurement policies and good practices, and reviews the extent to which contracting agencies follow procedures.68 Such audits are useful if they lead to increased compliance with legislation. Importantly, the agency also releases statistics in publicly available reports. It has published biannual reports regularly since 2014. This type of data can help increase transparency of procurement. The SNCP has also published a guide to public procurement in Angola, summarizing the legal and institutional framework within the field (also see Box 2).69
Despite these changes, the updated legal framework does not seem to strengthen public investment management sufficiently. Not enough has been done to increase integrity and transparency through infrastructure data disclosure. Currently, efforts to support transparency mostly rely on the National Procurement Portal, which did not yet list any tender announcements or adjudications related to dispute resolution prior to 2018.70 The legal framework does offer a small opening for improved transparency, thanks to its rules on disclosure on request, although this feature of the law is often overlooked. As part of the procurement process, procuring entities are obliged to prepare a number of documents describing the nature of each project (peças de procedimento). For public works, the required documentation includes a detailed specification of each project (caderno de encargos). Documents must be made available upon request to all ‘interested parties’ (partes interessados), which, narrowly defined, include prospective bidders but could also be interpreted as applying to a broader set of stakeholders.71 However, to date even groups directly involved in tracking public infrastructure delivery have rarely availed themselves of this facility, which in any case does not obviate the need for proactive infrastructure data disclosure by the government.
Box 2: Updated procurement legislation
The legal framework for procurement, updated in 2016 (Decreto Presidencial No. 198/16), aims to address some of the implementation challenges identified since the initial procurement law was enacted in 2010. The Public Contracts Code establishes four modalities for contracting: public tender (without a qualification phase); limited tender with pre-qualification; limited tender by invitation; and simplified tender, whereby a contract can be awarded directly to a single bidder. The latter replaces the negotiated procedure, which is now considered a component of all public contracting. All contracts valued at Kz 182 million (US$1.5 million, at the 2015 exchange rate) and above must be subject to either public tender or limited tender with pre-qualification.
This represents a strengthening of the requirements, as it significantly lowers the previous threshold of Kz 500 million, set in the 2010 legislation. Only contracts valued at less than Kz 182 million can be awarded through limited tender by invitation. As a general rule, simplified tenders can be used only for contracts valued below Kz 5 million (US$41,300 at the 2015 exchange rate), but the law establishes a host of exemptions that essentially make it fairly easy to justify contracting with very limited competition and openness.
The law outlines general rules for framework contracts; these rules have yet to be specified in secondary legislation. The requirement for certain contracts to be approved by the President of the Republic seems to have been removed; under the previous law, projects valued above Kz 1 billion (US$8.3 million) needed presidential approval.
Procurement remains devolved to public procurement entities, with all government budget units (ministries, state-owned companies, provincial governments, municipal administrations etc.) entitled to contract out the supply of goods and services. The 2016 law expands procurement rights to embassies and foreign representations. The National Procurement Service (SNCP), initially created under the 2010 law, was formally established in December 2013 but became fully operational only in 2015. SNCP is a regulatory agency focusing mainly on monitoring procurement entities’ compliance with the legal framework, and on receiving and settling tender complaints. It has the power to terminate contracts that do not comply with the law, and can refer suspicious cases to the internal inspection or supreme audit authorities.
Significant resources have also been invested in building capacity within the decentralized procurement agencies. This is important, as enforcement of procurement rules has been weak historically. In an unpublished study, Soreide et al. found that procurement procedures had been followed in only one-third of a sample of cases (see footnote 16).
The new law introduces two practices that hold promise for improving transparency and monitoring of public infrastructure delivery. The first is the creation of a National Procurement Portal (Article 12). The second is the creation of a list of companies that undertake construction work for the government. The details of how the list will be managed are, however, left to the discretion of the President of the Republic (Article 13).
Nor does the new legal framework reinforce mechanisms that would increase the consequences of non-compliance with laws and regulations. For example, it fails to strengthen the authorities’ ability to prevent modifications to project budgets, which would help to reduce cost overruns and project delays. The altering of contract prices after project initiation has been a persistent challenge for Angola, with project costs often exceeding the amounts indicated in the procurement process. This increases the cost of infrastructure delivery for the government, makes financially viable projects unviable, and drains public resources. This flaw in the system is even more of a concern given the current economic and fiscal context, with the government struggling to balance the budget. These issues have been identified as key weaknesses affecting the implementation phase of public investment management.72
In the post-crisis period, the National Directorate of Public Investment of the Ministry of Planning and Territorial Development tightened the requirements for project appraisal, selection and monitoring. It also reinforced the public investment database, SIPIP; invested in increased capacity for project preparation; and developed a manual for project monitoring and quality assessment through, among other things, field visits.73 These efforts do not seem to have been systematic, however, and there is room for further improvement, including through the development of sensitivity analyses and risk-mitigation measures. The ministry also needs to adopt systematic ex ante and ex post evaluations, and to put in place procedures for feeding the lessons of these evaluations back into future arrangements for project appraisal, selection and monitoring.
Historically, the Angolan authorities have paid limited attention to the monitoring of public assets. Monitoring was severely impaired by the civil war, and it has taken years to address this gap.
Historically, the Angolan authorities have paid limited attention to the monitoring of public assets. Monitoring was severely impaired by the civil war, and it has taken years to address this gap. When the SIGFE platform was introduced in 2004, it did not include public assets that had been acquired in the past. Currently the government relies on an integrated system for public asset management (SIGPE), which is a module of SIGFE and not yet fully integrated with SIPIP.74 An annual survey of the total value of public assets is used to update the system and inform the general state accounts (Conta Geral do Estado). In 2013, inputs were obtained from 1,576 public entities (covering 80 per cent of all public entities targeted); the resultant data put the value of public assets at approximately Kz 6 trillion (roughly US$60 billion). When the exercise was repeated in 2014, the value of public assets was estimated to have declined by 8 per cent to Kz 5.6 trillion, although the survey’s coverage increased to 87 per cent of targeted public entities.75 This suggests that insufficient attention is given to maintenance.
Although the annual valuation of public assets is presented in the general state accounts, there are concerns about the accuracy of estimates of present value. Due to limited capacity, such concerns are particularly acute in respect of assessments of the physical condition of assets. Public investment projects that have yet to be completed are excluded from the valuation. There have also been concerns about the informality of the process for the handover of assets from contractor to government after project completion, and the implications for when an asset is to be included in the system. Although the new system is relatively unsophisticated and not yet complete – pre-2014 assets are still being incorporated into it – some progress is being made in the monitoring of assets.76 Areas for improvement would include strengthening the capacity to prepare year-on-year comparisons of increases in the asset base (i.e. additional infrastructure) and losses of asset value (due to poor maintenance).
Status of Angola’s public investment management
Public investment management in Angola is extremely weak across most of the 15 categories (‘institutions’) in the IMF’s PIMA framework. Weaknesses in each of these areas provide a powerful explanation for the country’s poor record of infrastructure governance and modest achievements, despite massive investments, in the post-civil war era. Had the government invested seriously in strengthening institutions, it might well have achieved the same or better results with fewer resources, and almost certainly would have obtained greater value for money. There is an urgent need to speed up reforms aimed at improving the quality of public investment, in order to get more value from increasingly scarce resources.
36 Hart, T., Krause, P. and Miller, M. (2015), Bricks and dollars: Improving public investment in infrastructure, London: Overseas Development Institute, https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/10117.pdf (accessed 9 Feb. 2018); Rajaram, A., Le, T. M., Kaiser, K., Kim, J.-H. and Frank, J. (eds) (2014), The Power of Public Investment Management: Transforming Resources into Assets for Growth, Washington, DC: World Bank, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/461121468164052711/pdf/911580PUB0Box301610EPI02103160Sep30.pdf (accessed 9 Feb. 2018); OECD (2015), Towards a Framework for the Governance of Infrastructure, Paris: OECD, https://www.oecd.org/gov/budgeting/Towards-a-Framework-for-the-Governance-of-Infrastructure.pdf (accessed 9 Feb. 2018); IMF (2015), Angola: Selected Issues, Country Report No. 15/3023, Washington, DC: IMF, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2015/cr15302.pdf (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
37 OECD (2015), Towards a Framework for the Governance of Infrastructure, p. 1.
38 OECD (2017), Getting Infrastructure Right: A Framework for Better Governance, Paris: OECD, http://www.oecd.org/publications/getting-infrastructure-right-9789264272453-en.htm (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
39 Hart, Krause and Miller (2015), Bricks and dollars, p. 19.
40 Rajaram et al. (2014), The Power of Public Investment Management.
41 IMF (2015), Making Public Investment More Efficient, Staff Report, Washington, DC: IMF, p. 7, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Policy-Papers/Issues/2016/12/31/Making-Public-Investment-More-Efficient-PP4959.
42 The efficiency gap is measured as ‘… the distance from an efficiency frontier, which is defined by the countries with the highest coverage and quality of infrastructure (output) for a given level of public capital stock (input)’. Ibid.
43 Ibid., p. 23.
44 Interview, Luanda, February 2016.
45 The analysis in this paper does not represent an attempt to replicate a full Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA) or apply its methodology, which the IMF has done for a number of countries. That exercise is far beyond the scope of this paper. Here the PIMA is used as a way to frame analysis of the country’s infrastructure and public investment governance.
46 World Bank (2015), First Fiscal Management Development Policy Financing, Washington, DC: World Bank, p. 22, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/913501468187795700/pdf/93732-PGD-REVISED-P153243-P155323-R2015-0112-2-Box391488B-OUO-9.pdf (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
47 A 2011 paper reported that ‘if spare revenue above the US$50 benchmark had been saved between 2005 and 2010, Angola would have accumulated as much as US$19 billion by 2010’. Jensen, S. K. and Paulo, F. (2011), Reforms of the Angolan Budget Process and Public Financial Management: Was the Crisis a Wakeup Call?, Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute, p. 65, http://www.cmi.no/publications/4259-reforms-of-the-angolan-budget-process-and-public (accessed 9 Feb. 2018). It is not unlikely that a similar amount could have been saved between 2011 and 2014, in which case the economy would not have been as negatively influenced by the 2008–10 crisis.
48 IMF (2011), Angola: Fourth Review Under the Stand-By Arrangement, Request for Waivers of Nonobservance of Performance Criteria, Request for Waivers of Applicability of Performance Criteria, and Request for Modification of Performance Criteria, Washington, DC: IMF, p. 7, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=24647.0 (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
49 IMF (2012), Angola, 2012 Article IV Consultation and Post Program Monitoring, Washington, DC: IMF, p. 40, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2012/cr12215.pdf (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
50 Africon (2008), Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic: Unit Costs of Infrastructure Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, Abidjan: AfDB, p. 5, http://www.eu-africa-infrastructure-tf.net/attachments/library/aicd-background-paper-11-unit-costs-summary-en.pdf (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
51 National and sectoral planning should be understood here in a broad sense as policies ‘… which ensure public investment decisions are based on clear and realistic priorities, cost estimates, and objectives for each sector’. The finding is based on a sample of 25 countries. IMF (2015), Making Public Investment More Efficient, p. 20.
52 Economist Intelligence Unit (2015), Evaluating the environment for public–private partnerships in Africa: The 2015 Infrascope, London: Economist Intelligence Unit, p. 23, https://library.pppknowledgelab.org/documents/2399 (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
53 Brumby, J., Kaiser, K. and Kim, J.-H. (2013), ‘Public Investment Management and Public-Private Partnerships’, in Allen, R., Hemming, R. and Potter, B. (eds) (2013), The International Handbook of Public Financial Management, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 580.
54 Republic of Angola, Ministry of Finance (2015), Orçamento Geral Do Estado 2016, Relatório de Fundamentação, pp. 50–52, http://www.minfin.gov.ao/PortalMinfin/faces/materiasderealce/orcamentogeraldoestado/ogepassados (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
55 The Ministry of Planning and Territorial Development is referred to here as the Ministry of Planning. The analysis mostly addresses infrastructure governance prior to the new administration of President Lourenço taking office in 2017. One of the first acts of the new president was to merge the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Economy, creating the Ministry of Economy and Planning.
56 World Bank (2015), First Fiscal Management Development Policy Financing, p. 27.
57 IMF (2015), Angola: Selected Issues, p. 11; and World Bank (2002), Angola-Economic Management TA, Washington, DC: World Bank, p. 3, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/318831468768543420/pdf/multi0page.pdf (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
58 IMF (2014), Angola, Second Post-Program Monitoring, Washington, DC: IMF, p. 8, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=41428.0 (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
59 Rajaram et al. (2014), The Power of Public Investment Management, p. 56.
60 Jensen and Paulo (2011), Reforms of the Angolan Budget Process and Public Financial Management, pp. 56–57.
61 IMF (2015), Angola: Selected Issues, p. 11.
62 Government of Angola (2010), Diário da República, I série N.º 67, Decreto Presidencial n.º 31/10, de 12 de Abril de 2010.
63 Interview, Luanda, February 2016.
64 Gabinetes de Estudos, Planeamento e Estatística (GEPE).
65 Fjeldstad, O.-H., Jensen, S. K. and Paulo, F. M. (2014), ‘The non-oil tax reform in Angola – On track or losing momentum?’, CMI, https://www.cmi.no/publications/5052-the-non-oil-tax-reform-in-angola (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
66 International Budget Partnership (2017), Open Budget Survey 2017, Angola, https://www.internationalbudget.org/wp-content/uploads/angola-open-budget-survey-2017-summary-english.pdf.
68 Government of Angola (2015), Diário da República, I série N.º 118, Decreto Presidencial n.º 162/15 de 19 de Agosto de 2015.
69 Serviço Nacional da Contratação Pública (2016), Manual Prático da Contratação Pública Angolana, Luanda: Serviço Nacional da Contratação Pública, http://www.minfin.gov.ao/cs/groups/public/documents/document/zmlu/mdex/~edisp/minfin011339.pdf (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).
70 http://www.contratacaopublica.minfin.gov.ao/PortalSNCP. Some tenders have since been published, which is a major improvement.
71 The possibility of this interpretation of the legal framework applying was discussed in an interview with SNCP staff. They confirmed that it would be possible in principle for stakeholders to obtain detailed information about planned infrastructure in this manner. Interview, officials from the SNCP, Luanda, February 2016.
72 IMF (2015), Angola: Selected Issues, p. 13; and Soreide et al. (unpublished), ‘Towards “value for money” in Angolan construction projects’, p. 31.
73 World Bank (2015), First Fiscal Management Development Policy Financing, p. 26; and interview with official in the Ministry of Planning in Luanda, February 2016 (in the interview, reference was made to a presidential decree on the project monitoring approach, but it has not been possible to locate this decree).
74 Ibid., p. 27.
75 Republic of Angola, Ministry of Finance (2016), Conta Geral do Estado, Exercício Fiscal 2014, p. 60, http://www.minfin.gov.ao/PortalMinfin/faces/contageraldoestado (accessed 9 Feb. 2018).