In February the president's civilian chief-of-staff, Carlos Feijó, announced new figures on Angola's public debt, which reached critical levels in 2010. According to Mr Feijó, a total of US$1.216bn of arrears was incurred in the 2010 public investment programme (PIP), which included massive investments in the construction, transport, energy and water sectors. Of these arrears, only around US$200m were paid in the final quarter of 2010, which Mr Feijó put down to the government's strained finances at the time and various bureaucratic issues. However, Mr Feijó insisted that all arrears from the 2010 PIP would be repaid by the end of March. In total, the government intends to repay US$2.59bn of arrears during the first quarter of 2011, which includes some of the arrears accumulated in 2008-09, as outlined in the 2011 budget.

However, the precise level of the government's domestic debt arrears-which were mostly incurred in 2008-09-remains unclear, and has not been clarified by the series of damaging revelations throughout last year, which indicated that they could have climbed to between US$6.8bn and US$9bn. A special committee headed by Mr Feijó, Comité de Gestão da Dívida Pública, has been created to oversee the repayment of these arrears and to streamline the payment process for public projects. However, it has done little to clarify the level of debt held by the government, with ministers continuing to issue contradictory and ambiguous statements. The most recent debt assessment was made by a UK auditor, Ernst & Young, which was hired by the government to carry out an overhaul of public expenditure. Ernst & Young estimated total domestic debt at US$6.349bn at end-December 2009, which includes much (but not all) of the debt incurred during the financial crisis. For its part, the government has excluded from its estimates arrears incurred for projects in Angola's Special Economic Zone, comprising Luanda and some of neighbouring Bengo province, lowering the total to US$4.792bn.