Gilbert Ondongo (born 1960"Ondongo Gilbert", ''Congo Brazzaville: Les Hommes de Pouvoir'', number 1
Africa Intelligence
29 October 2002 .) is a

Congolese Congolese or Kongolese may refer to: African peoples * Congolese people (disambiguation) * Kongo people, a Bantu ethnic group who live along the Atlantic coast of Africa from Pointe-Noire (Republic of Congo) to Luanda, Angola, primarily defined by ...

politician who has served in the government of Congo-Brazzaville as Minister of State for the Economy, Industry and Public Finances since 2017. Previously he was Minister of Labour from 2005 to 2009, and

Minister of Finance A ministry of finance is a ministry or other government agency in charge of government finance, fiscal policy, and financial regulation. It is headed by a finance minister, an executive or cabinet position . A ministry of finance's portfolio ...

from 2009 to 2016.

Political career

Born at

Owando Owando is a town and a commune located in the central Republic of the Congo lying on the Kouyou River. It is the capital of Cuvette Department and of Owando District. It is home to a market and has an airport An airport is an aerodr ...

, Ondongo belongs to the Kouyou ethnic group. He began working at the

Marien Ngouabi University Marien Ngouabi University (French: ''Université Marien Ngouabi'', UMNG) is the only state-funded university in the Republic of the Congo. It is located in the nation's capital Brazzaville. History The University of Brazzaville was founded on 4 D ...

Brazzaville Brazzaville () is the capital (political), capital and largest city of the Republic of the Congo. Administratively, it is a Departments of the Republic of the Congo, department and a Communes of the Republic of the Congo, commune. Constituting t ...

in the 1980s. After

Denis Sassou Nguesso Denis Sassou Nguesso (born 23 November 1943) is a Congolese politician and former military officer who has served as president of the Republic of the Congo since 1997. He also previously served as president from 1979 to 1992. Sassou Nguesso he ...

returned to power in the June–October 1997 civil war, he appointed Ondongo as Adviser to the President on the Economy, Finance, and the Budget; Ondongo served in that post from 1997 to 2002. He was then appointed to the government on 18 August 2002 as Secretary of State for Budgetary Reform and Financial Administration, working under the Minister of the Economy, Finance, and the Budget. He was promoted to the position of Minister of Labour, Employment, and Social Security on 7 January 2005. Ondongo was Congo's candidate for the Presidency of the 96th Session of the

International Labour Conference The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is one of the firs ...

, but Congo withdrew his candidacy on 1 June 2007, allowing the unopposed election of

Albania Albania ( ; or ), officially the Republic of Albania (), is a country in Southeast Europe. It is located in the Balkans, on the Adriatic Sea, Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea, and shares land borders with Montenegro to ...

's Kastriot Sulka. During the campaign for the July 2009 presidential election, Ondongo worked on President Sassou Nguesso's re-election campaign, heading the campaign's finance and budgetary control department. After Sassou Nguesso won re-election, he moved Ondongo to the post of Minister of Finance on 15 September 2009. On 28 January 2010, Ondongo announced that Congo-Brazzaville had reached its "completion point" in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries program, a debt relief initiative, thereby qualifying for a large reduction in the size of its

external debt A country's gross external debt (or foreign debt) is the liabilities that are owed to nonresidents by residents. The debtors can be government, governments, corporation, corporations or citizens. External debt may be denominated in domestic or f ...

. At the PCT's Sixth Extraordinary Congress, held in July 2011, Ondongo was elected to the PCT's 51-member Political Bureau. In the July–August 2012 parliamentary election, Ondongo stood as the PCT candidate in the first constituency of Owando. He won the seat in the first round with 75.19% of the vote. In the government appointed after the election, on 25 September 2012, Ondongo retained the finance portfolio and was additionally assigned responsibility for planning; he was also promoted to the rank of Minister of State. In October 2013, Ondongo presented the draft of the national budget for 2014 to the National Assembly; the budget was increased slightly, from 4.12 billion

CFA franc CFA franc (, ) is the name of two currencies used by 210 million people (as of 2023) in fourteen African countries: the West African CFA franc (where "CFA" stands for , i.e. "African Financial Community" in English), used in eight West African c ...

s in 2013 to 4.13 billion for 2014. After Sassou Nguesso's victory in the March 2016 presidential election, Ondongo was appointed as Minister of State for the Economy, Industrial Development and Promotion of the Private Sector on 30 April 2016; Calixte Ganongo replaced him as Minister of Finance. Ondongo took office at his new ministry on 4 May 2016, succeeding Isidore Mvouba. In the July 2017 parliamentary election, Ondongo stood unopposed as a candidate in the second constituency of Owando, with no other candidates standing in the constituency.Roger Ngombé
"Elections législatives : Des favoris et des duels attendus"
ADIAC, 29 June 2017 .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ondongo, Gilbert 1960 births Living people Finance ministers of the Republic of the Congo Government ministers of the Republic of the Congo People from Cuvette Department Congolese Party of Labour politicians Members of the National Assembly (Republic of the Congo)