Brazzaville, May 28, 2026 (Lusa) - Sao Tome and Principe’s finance minister, Gareth Guadalupe, said the election year could limit fiscal execution, but added that the 2026-2040 National Sustainable Development Strategy should ensure the continuity of reforms regardless of government.
“We have presidential elections on 19 July and legislative elections on 27 September, and naturally this could somewhat limit fiscal execution in 2026,” Gareth Guadalupe told Lusa on Thursday on the sidelines of the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meeting in Brazzaville, which runs until Friday.
“Knowing that we are still an economy heavily dependent on the state, elections naturally impact public administration productivity a little,” he added, reacting to the report the AfDB announced on Wednesday, which forecast economic growth for the country of 2.4% in 2026 and 3.2% in 2027, driven mainly by “the recovery of tourism”.
The “African Economic Outlook” report states that “growth prospects remain positive”, but adds that the electoral cycle could, on the one hand, “accelerate the execution of visible public projects”, but also “shift policy focus to short-term priorities, delay structural reforms and increase fiscal deviations, thus weakening macroeconomic stability and the reform momentum in the medium term”.
“São Tomé and Príncipe has a 2026-2040 National Sustainable Development Strategy with a very clear vision, and for the first time, we are passing this strategy into law,” the minister said.
The document integrates 47 development programmes and will serve as the basis for national development programmes, which each government will define over future legislatures.
“We no longer need to invent anything else. Each government will define its priorities within the National Sustainable Development Strategy,” Guadalupe said.
The defined priorities include structural investments such as airport modernisation, the construction of a logistics port and the energy transition through renewable energy.
Gareth Guadalupe is participating in the AfDB Group annual meeting, where representatives from the 81 member countries — among them heads of state, finance ministers, planning ministers and central bank governors, including from Portuguese-language African countries — will analyse the 2025 progress and the major challenges ahead.
The theme for the 2026 meetings is "Mobilising Africa’s Development Financing at Scale in a Fragmented World" and brings together more than 3,000 people in the capital of the Republic of the Congo.
Health measures against Ebola mark the 2026 meetings. Authorities have reinforced these measures in Brazzaville, which is divided from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by the river Congo.
The bank has also altered the format of the meetings, adopting "a hybrid format, allowing all delegates to fully participate in the proceedings, regardless of travel and logistical conditions"
MIM/LYT // AYLS
Lusa
