Portugal Desperate for Investment from Former Colony Angola

The economically insecure country of Portugal is seeking investment from its former colony, Angola.

Portuguese Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Luís Ferreira, arrived in the Angolan capital of Luanda on Wednesday, and will be met by Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, who lived in Angola as a child. Both will meet with Angola's President José Eduardo dos Santos and other officials.

The statesmen will discuss new trade partnerships and the possibility of the Angolan government investing in Portuguese companies.

Angolan investors currently own 3.8 percent of the businesses in Portugal's stock exchange and is the country's biggest non-European investor.

The debt crises in Greece, and now Italy, have dominated the coverage of Europe's economic disaster, but close behind the two Mediterranean countries in terms of economic instability is Portugal.

Part of the group of PIIG countries (Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Greece), Portugal's unemployment rate has risen over 12 percent while its Gross Domestic Product has fallen by 0.4 percent in the third quarter. Like other Eurozone nations, the Portuguese government is attempting to raise taxes while cutting spending in an effort to reduce debt.

Similar to Greece, Portugal needs to reach a budgetary benchmark if it is to receive a 78 billion-euro ($105 billion) rescue package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Additionally, Portugal and Greece are projected to be the only two European economies to suffer through recessions in both 2011 and 2012, according to the Financial Times.

Shrinking export revenues are not helping Portugal's economy, and a new deal with Angola, which already gets one-fifth of its imports from Portugal, could kick-start the economy.

Many Angolans have business interests in Portugal, but also a lot of Portuguese people are here in Luanda making business, so I would say it's a reciprocity which is good for both countries, Angolan Chief of Staff Carlos Maria Feijo told Agence France Presse.

The southwest African country seems like an odd call for foreign investors, but thanks primarily to oil revenue, Angola is one of the world's fastest growing economies.

In Mercer's recent rankings of the cities with the highest cost of living for ex-patriots, Luanda came in first, beating out cities like Tokyo, London and Moscow.

I can't think of anywhere where it has happened like this, Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security researcher Pedro Seabra told News24.

You have Tunisia and Algeria which have strong companies operating in Europe, but nothing on the scale of the Angolan investments we're seeing in Portugal. I am sure we are going to see a lot more Angolan purchases of Portuguese assets in the near future.

However, the economic prosperity in the country has not yet touched all Angolans. On Tuesday, 700 demonstrators and students marched in Luanda to protest both President Dos Santos, who has been in power for 32 years, and economic inequality.

When I see my brothers and sisters living in these terrible conditions when the country is so rich yet people are dying of hunger and from not having clean water or medicines, I have to fight for this cause because I am Angolan, protestor Adolfo Andre told the Middle East North Africa Financial Network.