It came into effect at 00:00 (the same time in Lisbon), and was announced on Monday night in a note from the Petroleum Products Regulatory Institute.

The price of other products, with fixed prices, namely gasoline, kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), remain unchanged.

The Angolan government has decided to gradually adjust petroleum products to market levels by 2025, starting the process with the change in the price of gasoline in June 2023, which went from 160 kwanzas (18 cents) to the current 300 kwanzas (33 cents).

The Angolan executive had recently noted that the increase would happen, although without giving a date for the implementation of the new prices.

In an interview with Lusa last week, Angola's Minister of Finance, Vera Daves, said that there was still no certainty about when there would be a new withdrawal of subsidies.

"I never said that there would not be [an increase]. What I said is that we were constantly considering the best time for this to happen. And why do I say that? I say that because of inflation (...). Certainly [there will be an increase], when we have not yet decided", said the minister in Washington, on the sidelines of the 2024 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

The minister explained that "fuels are currently subsidised and the political decision has been made to gradually remove this subsidy", stressing that "that is what it is all about".

"What remains to be decided, and we continue to dialogue and deepen this reflection, is the cadence and the products, it being certain - and this decision has also been made - that we do not intend to touch the subsidy for cooking gas and kerosene, so that these are products that we want to keep protected", she said.

"The products for which we want to withdraw the subsidy are gasoline and diesel. We have already made a first move on gasoline. Obviously, there are things that went less well and we learned our lessons and we want to calibrate, but in relation to the mitigation measures", added the minister.

The process of withdrawing fuel subsidies began in 2023 and continued in March of this year, with the withdrawal of exemptions for taxi drivers, despite criticism and claims about the social and economic reality of families, who complain about the daily increase in basic necessities.

Also last month, the IMF encouraged the Angolan government to continue reforms, including the removal of fuel subsidies, to better prepare the country for possible global shocks, especially those in the oil market.

When the fuel reform, repeatedly defended by the IMF, was launched in early 2023, Angola was the fourth cheapest country in the world to fill a fuel tank.

The State's expenditure on fuel subsidies should have fallen by 200 million euros last year, according to the explanatory report of the 2024 Budget, which predicts that in 2023 Angola will have spent around two billion euros on this item, a reduction of around 10% compared to the 2.2 billion euros spent in 2022.

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