The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation visiting Congo, Dalia Hakura, has said that Congo is expected to record a 6% growth between 2014 and 2019, after remaining stable at 3.5% over the past three years, according to an official communiqué issued here Wednesday.
The IMF mission also hailed the drop in inflation, particularly the effect of the reduction in foodstuffs prices and the appreciation of the foreign exchange rate for the CFAF.
In these conditions, the Bretton Woods institution said that the macro-economic results in Congo have continued being globally sufficient.
IMF, after its two-week satisfactory mission to Congo, said “the state budget depends strongly on oil receipts and therefore the variation in the rates and the exhaustible nature of resources could present risks for the country’s macro-economic stability and for the attainment of the high, sustained and mid-term inclusive growth goals in the non-oil sector.”
The head of the IMF delegation also said that the official reserves at the Central bank of Central African States (BEAC), of which Congo is a member, dropped by 265 billion CFAF to remain at 2,509 billion CFAF in late 2013, or the equivalent of about seven months of imports of goods and services.
The mission also said it insisted on the need to control the rise in public expenditure and to place the economy on the path to budget balance, aiming at reducing gradually the primary deficit, oil not included, while preserving the social targeted expenditure and the investments appropriate for growth.
For this year, the mission encourages the Congolese authorities to adopt appropriate measures to control the budget goals of non-oil and expenditure receipts, an exercise that will particularly be important, especially with the organization of the All-Africa Games next year and the general elections.
