FACRA, Quanten envisage contract for Soyo Refinery

 Luanda – A financing contract aimed at facilitating the supply of goods and services to the Soyo Refinery Project is to be signed between the Quanten Consortium Angola, LLC, and the Active Fund of Angolan Risk Capital (FACRA).

According to a press note, this partnership comes after an extraordinary meeting held between senior executives of Quanten Consortium Angola and FACRA which decided for major support of local firms.

 

The parties agreed that when Soyo Refinery approves a contract with an Angolan firm, FACRA takes the responsibility to provide financial support to such undertaking.

 

The note also reveals that the two institutions have agreed to finalise the contract in the coming three months.

 

In this ambit, Segun Thomas, one of the managers of Quanten Consortium Angola, LLC, stresses on the note that the firm is honoured for having the opportunity to help local Angolan companies to overcome one of the main hindrances to entrepreneurial success, that is, access to capital.  

 

On its turn, the co-ordinator of the resctructuring committee of FACRA, Teodoro de Jesus Xavier Poulson, said that “this initiative will enable FACRA to fulfil one of its greatest goals, which is to provide leverage to small and medium enterprises.     

Military support reduces deaths in Mozambique - Ambassador

 Luanda - The Mozambican ambassador to Angola, Osvalda Joana, said in Luanda that the support of the SADC and Rwandan military made it possible to reduce the number of deaths in the country, between 2020 and 2021, by 82 percent.

In a recent interview with ANGOP, on the occasion of the 47th anniversary of Mozambican Independence, the diplomat said that the figures until 2021 showed that there were at least 3,000 dead and 850,000 displaced, but with the operations to support the Mozambican forces, the numbers were reduced by 82 percent.

According to the ambassador, the success of the military operations has to do with the successful measures on terrorism against the group of extremists, carried out by the Mozambican forces, supported by the Rwandan military and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

In another part of the interview, the diplomat spoke about the need to strengthen cooperation between the two countries, in the areas of oil and gas, in which Angola has extensive experience, as well as agriculture and tourism.

"Mozambique and Angola have excellent political and historical relations of friendship, brotherhood, solidarity and cooperation. Cooperation is based on the General Agreement signed between the two countries on 5 September 1978 in Luanda, which stipulates bilateral exchange in the socio-political, economic and technical-scientific areas," she said.

Ukraine War: Russia Says 40 Ukrainian Prisoners Killed In Blast

 Russia’s defence ministry says 40 Ukrainian prisoners-of-war have been killed by Ukrainian shelling of a prison in separatist-held Donetsk.

Officials alleged that 75 others had been injured in a rocket strike on the prison camp in Olenivka. The BBC cannot independently verify this claim.

Ukraine’s military denied carrying out the strike and instead accused Russia of shelling the prison.

It said Moscow was seeking to cover up evidence of torture at the site.

“The Russian occupants pursued their criminal goals, thus, to accuse Ukraine of committing ‘war crimes’, and to hide the torture of prisoners and shootings committed there by the orders of the occupation administration and the command of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” Ukraine’s General Staff said.

“The Russian enemy continues his propaganda methods of waging information warfare in order to accuse the Armed Forces of Ukraine of shelling civilian infrastructure and the population, hiding his own insidious actions.”

Footage broadcast on Russian state TV shows the smoking wreckage of a building, which appears to contain some human remains. The BBC cannot independently verify the footage, but analysis suggests the building was hit with an incendiary device, not regular artillery.

Daniil Bezsonov, a spokesperson for the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, said the strike had been a “direct hit on a barracks holding prisoners” and the number killed might increase.

Russia’s defence ministry said the strike had been carried out with US-made Himars artillery and it accused Ukraine of a “deliberately perpetrated” provocation.

The ministry’s spokesperson, Lt Gen Igor Konashenkov, also said eight prison staff had been wounded.

But Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, said the Russian allegations were “a classic, cynical and elaborate false flag operation” designed to discredit Ukrainian authorities.

“This is a deliberate, cynical, calculated mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners, which requires strict investigation. We demand a reaction from the UN and international organizations,” he added.

It has been established that a number of Ukrainian troops who surrendered to Russian forces after a protracted siege at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol were taken to Olenivka.

The troops had held out against a relentless Russian assault on the sprawling site for weeks and surrendered in May after using the plant’s maze of tunnels to shelter from artillery and air strikes.

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