Luanda — Angola is on the right path toward Gruduating as a Middle Income Country, the minister of State and head of the Civil Affairs Office of the Presidnecy of the Republic, Edeltrudes Costa, said Thursday in Luanda.

Edeltrudes Costa was speaking at the opening of the opening of the 2nd Phase of the Workshop on the Process of Graduation of Angola as a Middle Income Country, which is taking place on Thursday for ministers and senior government officials.

The minister of State expressed the conviction that the country is on track with regard to the first criterion for the process of evaluation, in view of its per capita income, which in itself is a major guarantor of the credibility of the political options made the Executive Angola, under the strategic leadership of president José Eduardo dos Santos.

He said that it is not easy for a country to win the recognition of the United Nations and its specialised agencies.

The official mentioned that the robust growth of the Angolan economy and the progress made by the country, particularly in the economic field, is the source of the approximation and, in some cases, the exceeding of the average gross national income per capita in the grouping of the middle-income countries.

"There is enough evidence to irrefutably show that our per capita income increased significantly, from a modest Usd 591 in 1994 to 4, 000 in 2010.

He added that this significant rise in the per capita income is the basis on which the main argument for the inclusion of Angola in the group of Middle Income Countries, but alongside the criteria of average income per capita there are two others that are also used as

technique in the graduation process, which includes the index of human capital and economic vulnerability.

"Each of these dimensions of analysis consists of several indicators to accurately assess whether a candidate meets or not to the required criteria," he explained.

For this reason, Edeltrudes Costa said that "Angolan Government understands that, although these last two criteria pose different realities and challenges, they are inseparable from each other."

He added that such a global and unified vision was crucial for the Executive to trace the responses to overcome the challenges and imbalances still persisting, in these two areas, that the process of conversion and economic transformation, political, social and cultural the has attained has not yet been able to solve in its entirety.

However, as said that in relation to the first criterion, "we know that we are on track with competence, an ability to rigorously evaluate decisions, with the ability to do hard work, we have been for some time, under the leadership of president José Eduardo dos Santos, giving responses to the challenges related to improving the country's position in the face of the indices of human capital and economic vulnerability.

"That is, doing everything possible so that the Angolan economy gets diversified and able to create comparative advantages that sustain the economic position of the country in the segments of the global production chains, higher value added characterised by the production of complex products and services with a high degree of incorporation of technology and capacity to generate jobs, " he said.

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