Guinea-Bissau Economy expected to grow 4.8 pct

Guinea-Bissau will end 2015 with economic growth of 4.8 percent, the head of the evaluation mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday in Bissau.
Felix Fischer, who heads an IMF mission that has been in the country since 2 December, said growth could have surpassed this figure if not for the crisis caused by the resignation of Domingos Simões Pereira’s government last August.
However, he stressed, its impact did not harm the country much because it lasted only two months, so despite activities coming to a standstill and a slowdown in some business deals due to a lack of decision-makers at ministries, projected growth increased by one tenth of a percentage point to 4.8 percent.
Felix Fischer announced that the execution of the state budget had generated enough savings to ensure the payment of salaries of civil servants in January and February 2016.
“Revenues in January and February are usually low,” said Fischer, whose delegation assessed the country’s economy after the political crisis resulting from the government’s fall in August.
He clarified that the visit served for the IMF to learn about the impact of the political crisis on the country’s economic growth and to take appropriate action in relation to the Guinea-Bissau 2016 General State Budget.
Fischer he had discussed with the Guinea-Bissau authorities the possibility of the government limiting expenditure to the revenue actually collected, thus avoiding the accumulation of more debt. MDT/Macauhub