Angola’s Mota-Engil works portfolio currently totals 800 million euros, with the Portuguese construction company forecasting double-digit growth in that historic market in 2019, executive director Manuel Mota admitted.
Manuel Mota said that the Angolan market maintained in 2018 the “preponderance” of the last years for the group.
“Now, of course, the group continues to grow and Angola is in a period of transition, post-election, so it does not lose importance at Mota-Engil level, but there are other markets that are currently growing more than Angola, for us, “said the construction group’s executive manager.
Already in 2019, the manager, the son of the businessman António Mota, chairman of Mota-Engil’s board of directors, predicts “double-digit growth” in the Angolan market. “We had stabilization in 2018 and we will have a growth in 2019,” said Manuel Mota, admitting that it will be a return to the times of the company’s high turnover in Angola.
For 70 years in Angola, Mota-Engil is one of the oldest Portuguese companies operating in that market and continues to conquer emblematic works in Angola.
António Mota and his son Manuel Mota met with Angolan President João Lourenço in November during the visit of the head of state to Lisbon.
Manuel Mota confirms the meeting, which he says are usual since his grandfather, founder of the construction group, met with António Agostinho Neto, the first President of Angola (1975 to 1979), and later with the Angolan President, José Eduardo dos Santos (1979-2017).
“We have been present for many years in Angola and it is on a regular basis that we have meetings with the presidents of the country. We had the opportunity to meet with President João Lourenço during his visit to Portugal, as we had been with him before “said Manuel Mota, who has been following these meetings with his father.
Manuel Mota replies: “These are meetings where we present the development of the company, how we look at the Angolan market, what we think about it, what the challenges are for companies and where it is that the group has valences and added value and where it can bet on specific projects in that country “.
The meetings are always requested by the entrepreneurs, says the executive administrator of Mota-Engil.
The Portuguese parliament approved last week a convention aimed at ending double taxation between the two countries – the same should happen today in the National Assembly, in Luanda -, as Manuel Mota argues that “long ago it was justified”, face to the “economic relationship” between the two States.
“Whether it is the best deal or not … what I know is that it is the possible agreement and it is already a first step in helping to promote and support the companies of the two countries,” he said.
As for maintaining a 5% tax on technical services, Manuel Mota argues that in the context of what is practised in African countries and according to Mota-Engil’s experience in the continent, that rate “is a very competitive rate “. Mozambique, for example, has a rate of 10%, he recalls.
However, he admits: “of course in a double taxation agreement could have been tried to avoid being any tax in this area“.