The Collective of Economic Operators of Congo (Copéco), during a press conference held on August 26 in Brazzaville, asked the government to initiate the payment of the domestic commercial debt for the revival of the national economy.
In addition to the issue relating to the payment of domestic commercial debt, Copéco is calling shortly for the clearance of the 2014-2016 audited debt, the publication of complaints related to the 2014-2016 audit, the publication of the results of the 2017-2018 and 2012-2013 audit. It also demands the payment of 2019 debts which risk increasing the stock of unpaid domestic debt.
“We just find that the government lacks the political will to initiate the payment of domestic commercial debt. For this, we are simply asking the State to pay our debts for the revival of the national economy, ” the President of the collective, Joséphat-Roger Obesse said.
For him, it is necessary for the government to support economic operators in trying to pay off the domestic debt because this situation, he says, paralyzes the national private sector considered as a motor of national development. “The private sector creates jobs and promotes the rotation of funding. Through fiscal and customs taxes, it keeps the state running. The state must therefore support us in order to remedy this alarming situation. “, he declared.
Copeco’s Communications Secretary Serge Banguélé, meanwhile, said that paying domestic debt is not only a priority for a state but it is an emergency. “We want this debt to be paid for the good health of our economy,” he said.
Asked by the press on the amount of this domestic debt, the president of Copéco indicated that the amount of the audited debt 2014-2016 is estimated at seventy-five billion CFA francs but, the debt itself audited is 147 billion of CFA francs. Nevertheless, the collective hopes that the government will make the results of the 2014-2016 claims available to them.
At the end of the meeting, the president of Copéco recalled that in this period of health crisis linked to the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19), companies have suffered losses, huge shortfalls that are impacting the private sector. To this end, Copéco invited the commission which manages the Task-force to initiate payments in order to begin to relieve as much as possible the economic operators who have closed their structures.
Note that it was from 2016 that the Congolese economy sank into a severe recession and suffocated the private sector. Domestic debt clearance is one of the requirements of the International Monetary Fund.
