Eyes are on African oil producers and their welcome windfall

[seemslikeadream]

September 17, 2004

By Alistair Thomson
......

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reckons Africa's oil producers should gain about $15 billion (R98 billion) a year for every $10 rise in crude prices. The lending agency insists the money should be used to cut poverty, build infrastructure and achieve sustainable growth.

.....

Sub-Sahara's biggest oil producers, Nigeria and Angola, ranked in the last 10 of Transparency International's 2003 corruption perception survey. Equatorial Guinea, the third-biggest producer, was not even ranked because of lack of data. But there are reasons for optimism, especially in Nigeria, which has set aside $2.5 billion in extra earnings from exporting crude at prices above its budgeted $25 a barrel.

.......

Angola also has a long way to go to improve transparency and efficiency in spending oil dollars, but Robert Bunyi, an economist on the Africa desk at Standard Bank, says the IMF will have extra leverage on the government as it negotiates a lending programme that should unblock bilateral aid. Angola has budgeted for $23 a barrel, and the deputy prime minister said last week higher prices brought in $275 million extra in the first six months.

Government sources say much of the windfall cash is being channelled straight into paying off expensive oil-backed loans taken out during a civil war that lasted nearly three decades. But one donor source says that despite Angola's progress towards better transparency, there is little chance the windfall will make a difference any time soon for Angola's 13 million people, most of whom live in abject poverty.

Equatorial Guinea, Africa's fastest-growing oil producer in recent years, should in theory be able to use its burgeoning revenues to best effect to improve the lot of its population, which numbers between 500 000 and 1 million.
But with Equatorial Guinea's history of corruption and criticism over human rights abuses, oil has yet to make much of an impact on the lives of its citizens beyond a privileged ruling elite.

more
http://www.businessreport.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=565&fArticleId=2228013