zerohedge
10/14/2018
[excerpt]
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-14/will-chinas-debt-diplomacy-backfireAuthored by Tim Daiss via Oilprice.com,
Angola, Africa’s second largest oil producer, has ramped up its financial ties with Beijing, but perhaps to its own detriment, The country’s state newspaper Jornal de Angola said on Wednesday that the country had secured $2 billion in Chinese funding from the China Development Bank for infrastructure projects. Angolan President João Lourenco secured the financing during his first visit to Beijing, the report added.
Details of the deal were not released, according to various media outlets. A Reuters report said on Wednesday that Angola is in the process of trying to diversify its economy since a fall in the price of crude in 2014 plunged it into recession. Inflation is running at more than 20 percent per year and at least one in five of workers in the country are unemployed.
News of the funding deal comes just a week after Fitch Ratings released negative news for the African oil producer. It said that Angola is expected to have a GDP growth rate of 1.5 percent in 2018, given the growing tendency for its declining trend witnessed in oil production, down from a previous 2.8 percent growth rate predicted earlier.
