Angola’s central bank has moved to reassure markets that the kwanza’s admission as a settlement currency on the Southern African Development Community’s real-time gross settlement platform poses no threat to the country’s international reserves, arguing the integration will ultimately improve the efficiency with which those reserves are managed.
Cristina Caniço, director of the Payment Systems Department at the National Bank of Angola (BNA), said on Tuesday that by stimulating regional demand for the kwanza and reducing Angola’s reliance on third-party currencies as intermediaries, the move should generate progressively greater efficiencies in the management of the country’s foreign exchange holdings over time.
“We do not foresee any significant impact on international reserves. We continue to have the same operations that are carried out today within the SADC-RTGS,” Caniço told a press conference. The sole difference, she stressed, is that those transactions will now be settled in kwanzas rather than in South African rand or any other currency external to the participating member states.
The formal accession was signed by BNA Governor Manuel Tiago Dias and his South African counterpart Lesetja Kganyago, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank and current chair of the SADC Committee of Central Bank Governors (CCBG). With the signing, the kwanza becomes only the second settlement currency admitted to the SADC-RTGS since the system was established in 2013, when it began operating exclusively in rand. The platform currently counts 15 regional member countries among its participants.
In this initial phase, five Angolan commercial banks have been authorised to operate on the regional platform: Banco Angolano de Investimentos (BAI), Banco Internacional de Crédito (BIC), Banco de Negócios Internacional (BNI), Banco de Crédito Sul (BCS) and Banco Yetu. This first cohort is expected to serve as the foundation for a gradual expansion of the number of institutions licensed to transact directly in kwanzas across the region.
By enabling direct settlement in kwanzas, financial institutions and companies will be able to bypass the need for foreign exchange conversions through external currencies — a structural change that reduces costs passed on to end clients. That benefit is expected to compound over time and become increasingly visible as the volume of transactions processed in kwanzas on the platform grows.
The central bank also highlighted that this currency diversification facilitates direct trade flows between businesses and clients across the region, optimising cash-flow management and ensuring swifter access to financial resources. These advantages are expected to consolidate progressively as more Angolan and SADC economic operators incorporate kwanza settlement into their standard commercial processes.
The SADC’s broader strategic roadmap envisages the future inclusion of additional regional currencies, with Botswana’s pula already at an advanced stage of integration — a signal that the system is on a trajectory toward becoming genuinely multi-currency, gradually diminishing the rand’s near-exclusive role as the default intermediary for intra-regional commerce across southern Africa.
This wider evolution reinforces, in the BNA’s view, the prospect of deeper regional financial integration. As more SADC member states see their national currencies recognised as direct settlement instruments, intra-regional trade is expected to gain greater fluidity, with reduced foreign exchange friction and greater predictability for companies, banks and consumers throughout the subregion.
Source: Mercado / Original article: https://mercado.co.ao/bna-garante-que-kwanza-na-sadc-nao-coloca-em-risco-reservas-internacionais/
