Pedestrians walk along Rua Serpa Pinto street in the Chiado district of Lisbon, Portugal
More than half of the 9,440 Portuguese companies that export to Angola have the West African country as their only foreign market said Portuguese daily newspaper Público citing official statistics.
The data requested by the newspaper from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed that last year 5,256 businesses were entirely dependent on Angola for their sales to foreign markets.
In value terms, the products placed in Angola by these 5,256 companies reached 1.234 billion euros, equivalent to 41 percent of the total raised from Portuguese exports to Angola in 2014.
The lack of diversification and heavy exposure to the Angolan market of thousands of micro and small and medium enterprises makes them vulnerable to financial threats, the newspaper said, citing problems that are currently faced by the Angolan economy due to falling oil prices.
Until 5 June, about two weeks after its launch, there were 312 applications to access the credit line to ease the liquidity situation of companies operating in Angola, launched by the Portuguese government, and funding requests amounting to a total of 121 million euros (about 20 percent of the total available).
INE figures showed that there are another 660 companies that depend on Angola for between 91 and 99 percent of their foreign sales, in addition to another 522 with an exposure of between 76 and 90 percent.
Between January and April, the value of exports to Angola fell 24.4 percent (to 725 million euros) compared to the same period of 2014 and in the first quarter China and South Korea (though in the latter case there may have been an effect timely extraordinary) overtook Portugal to become the two largest external suppliers of Angola. MDT/Macauhub
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