Angola

Angola has dramatically slashed its budget for the year and is reaching out to the World Bank and international lenders for at least $1bn in loans as Africa’s second-biggest oil producer and one of the continent’s star economic performers grapples with the fallout from the collapse in crude prices, the Financial Times reported. Luanda has already approached Goldman Sachs and Gemcorp Capital LLP, a small London-based investment firm set up last year, for loans of $250m from each institution. Both groups declined to comment.

Portugal's Novo Banco -- the successor to bailed-out Banco Espirito Santo (BES) -- has moved closer to a rescue deal for its Angolan unit, with the African nation's central bank agreeing a recapitalisation plan for the local business, Reuters reported. Novo Banco will retain a 9.9 percent stake in BES Angola (BESA) under a deal which will see some of its loans to the unit converted into equity, the National Bank of Angola said on Monday.

Forty-one public companies at risk of insolvency in Angola are being evaluated by the Economy Ministry and some may be terminated to avoid continued waste of public resources, the secretary of State of Economy said in Luanda., Macauhub reported. Laura Alcântara Monteiro, who spoke at the end of the meeting of the Committee for the Real Economy of the Council of Ministers, said the extinction of some of these units should be one of the solutions but that analysis work was still underway and should be completed in the coming weeks.

Nearly 35 years after winning independence from Portugal, Angola is being populated by its former colonizer once again -- this time by professionals and scores of workers laid off amid the economic slump, The Wall Street Journal reported. Portugal has been hard hit by the global downturn. Unemployment in the second quarter was 9.2% and the economy is expected to shrink by 3.7% this year. Temporary and seasonal construction work in other European Union countries -- a mainstay for Portuguese laborers -- have been drying up.