afrol News, 13 January - More than four billion US dollars in state oil revenue disappeared from Angolan government coffers from 1997-2002, roughly equal to the entire sum the government spent on all social programs in the same period, according to a new report released today.

The shortfall, which is equivalent to 10 percent of Angola's annual income, was calculated by analysing International Monetary Fund (IMF) figures, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch said today.

The group has published a 93-page report that details how much money was generated by oil, how much disappeared from public coffers, and how this shortfall undermined Angolans' civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

Meanwhile, although the 27-year civil war ended in 2002, an estimated 900,000 Angolans are still internally displaced. Millions more have virtually no access to hospitals or schools. According to UN estimates, almost half of Angola's 7.4 million children suffer from malnutrition.

- While ordinary Angolans suffered through a profound humanitarian crisis, their government oversaw the suspicious disappearance of a truly colossal sum of money, commented Arvind Ganesan, senior official at Human Rights Watch. "This seriously undermined Angolans' rights," he adds.

Angola is sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest oil exporter after Nigeria. State oil revenues surged after oil companies such as BP, ExxonMobil and Total expanded Angolan operations in the late 1990s.

Those oil revenues totalled US$ 17.8 billion from 1997 to 2002, or about 85 percent of total government revenue, the group found. "But an analysis of figures from the IMF shows that US$ 4.22 billion of that total has gone missing." This roughly equals total social spending in the country during the same year.

The US human rights activists conclude that the Luanda government therefore had not made a good faith effort to use their available resources to fulfil their obligations. Further, "the Angolan government has refused to provide information about the use of public funds to its population, thereby undermining the right to information."

- The Angolan government says the international community should do more to fund schools, hospitals and courts, said Mr Ganesan, "but it refuses to explain where billions of dollars of government revenue went. Any further aid to Angola should be conditional on very strict requirements for transparency in the government budget."

The Human Rights Watch report examines what it calls "the Angolan government's failure to implement IMF reform programs that could have led to greater transparency and accountability."

Since the mid-1990s, the government and the IMF negotiated four reform programs to increase transparency. "Three were implemented, but ultimately failed because of the government's lack of commitment to reform," the group concludes. Similarly, there had been several initiatives intended to promote greater government and corporate transparency. The Angolan government however had "not committed to either initiative."

- There have been many initiatives to promote transparency in Angola, but each time, the government walks away, commented Mr Ganesan. "It's an issue of political will."

Human Rights Watch called upon the Angolan government to publish all of the 'Oil Diagnostic' reports - which are commissioned by the government and the World Bank - conduct audits of the state-owned oil company Sonangol and participate in initiatives to promote transparency. Donors and international financial institutions "should include stringent measures to improve transparency as preconditions."

By staff writer

© afrol News

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