Businessmen and politicians from the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) have just agreed on the creation of a development bank in the bloc to support business and finance entrepreneurial activity in the nine member countries.

The decision was announced Friday, in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, at the close of the first business summit of the Business Confederation of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CE-CPLP), which, for three days, brought together nearly 300 participants, including businessmen, heads of government, diplomats, and international observers.

The president of the EC-CPLP, Salimo Abdula, believes that the creation of the development bank will support and finance small, medium or large projects and will allow to overcome difficulties in access to financing that often have a high cost in the countries of the community, making these investment initiatives unfeasible.

According to the source, the proposal to create this Development Bank was presented by the EC-CPLP in 2014 at the summit of heads of state at the time of the presidency of the Republic of Timor-Leste, where it met a favorable dispatch, but unfortunately did not move forward.

Salimo Abdula also explains that Equatorial Guinea's entry into the CPLP, besides supporting the thesis of an economically stronger, more cohesive, and dynamic community, also reinforces the advantage of a CPLP as an oil and gas producing bloc, considering that the largest oil resource discoveries of the last ten years in the world are in these countries.