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Angola Heavy Industry
By 1985 heavy industry was producing only 35 percent of
its
1973 output. The main branches of this sector were the
assembly of
vehicles; production of steel bars and tubes, zinc sheets,
and
other metal products; assembly of radio and television
sets; and
manufacture of tires, batteries, paper, and chemical
products.
There have been large investments to rehabilitate steel
production.
Nevertheless, although imports of steel dropped from more
than
58,000 tons in 1980 to 35,000 tons in 1986, Angola still
imported
most of its finished steel goods, including tubes, sheets,
and
plates.
In 1983 the government established a company to process
scrap
metal. The Northern Regional Enterprise for the
Exploitation of
Scrap Metal, located in Luanda, had the capacity to
process 31,000
tons of scrap metal and produced 7,125 tons of processed
scrap
metal in 1985, its first year of operation. The government
claimed
that the efforts of this enterprise had saved US$1.4
million that
would have been spent on importing scrap metal. The
government
planned to establish another company in Lobito, with the
financial
support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
and the
United Nations Industrial Development Organization
(UNIDO).
The government also controlled the automobile assembly
industry
through a company founded in 1978 after a Portuguese firm
had been
nationalized. The company consisted of a factory that
assembled
light vehicles; a plant, possibly at Viana, that assembled
buses
and heavy trucks; and a factory at Cunene that built the
chassis
for all these vehicles. The light vehicle factory was
particularly
affected by the cutback in imports in 1982, and its output
fell in
1983-84 to only 20 percent of capacity. Likewise, the bus
and truck
plant has experienced shutdowns because of a lack of
parts. Inputs
for the automobiles came from state-owned companies that
produced
paint, plastic seats, metal tubing, and rubber tires.
Data as of February 1989
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