By Kopano Gumbi and Rachel Savage

JOHANNESBURG, March 12 (Reuters) – Angola’s government is committed to completing its plan to remove all fuel subsidies, the country’s finance minister said on Tuesday, without specifying a timeline for cutting the costly benefits after deadly protests over the issue last year.

A near-doubling of fuel prices in June 2023 triggered protests in which five people died and eight were injured, Angolan police said at the time.

“We want to do it in a way that we could continue implementing (the fuel subsidy removal) and we would not have a social backlash so strong that we have to stop and never finalise the reform,” Vera Daves de Sousa told a virtual International Monetary Fund (IMF) event.

“The balance between the speed and the intensity will define how long it will take. But the commitment to implementing it is there.”

An IMF official told reporters on Monday that Angola had the ability to cut fuel subsidies and that the policy was included in the oil producer’s 2024 budget, without specifying whether all remaining subsidies were scheduled to be removed this year.

Daves de Sousa told Reuters in November that the government would remove them by the end of 2025.

Squeezed by surging debt costs and high pump prices, governments across Africa have been trying to scrap expensive fuel benefits, but this has proved unpopular, sparking discontent in countries including Senegal and Nigeria.

Angola is targeting a 60% debt-to-GDP ratio in the medium term, Daves de Sousa said. Last year, the ratio was 84.5%, including debt of state-owned companies such as oil producer Sonangol, according to the IMF. (Reporting by Kopano Gumbi and Rachel Savage Editing by Peter Graff)