Switch to euros, Angola’s banks tell their clients
SOME Angolan banks running low on dollars were offering customers euro notes and other foreign currencies after a distributor said it could no longer supply US cash.
“We are advising our clients to use more euros, rands and even (yuan) renminbi,” Fernando Teles, the chief executive of Banco BIC, Angola’s biggest private bank by branches, said last week in Luanda. Some customers with dollar accounts might convert their money into euros before making a cash withdrawal, he said.
The euro may soon become a major foreign currency in Africa’s second biggest oilproducing country, according to Teles, a transition that could be supported by Angola’s historical links with Portugal, from which it gained independence in 1975.
In Angola, which has seen its own currency depreciate by more than 34 percent to an official rate of about 135 kwanzas (R13.83) to the dollar this year, greenbacks are used to buy cars and houses and imported goods.
On the streets of Luanda, with supply drying up, $1 (R13.93) is now worth as much as 270 kwanza. That’s a 17 percent increase from the black market rates in September.
“There will continue to be foreign currency on the street, including dollar bills, but the tendency is for clients to use more credit cards and carry out more bank transfers,” Teles said.
Luanda street money changers on Thursday (said) that while they were buying dollars, they had none to sell.
Angolan lenders were discussing several solutions to the shortage of dollars, he said.
Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), a unit of JohannesburgFirst Rand, has a representative office in Luanda and said on November 13 that it would have to stop providing dollars to lenders in that country by the end of the month.
The South African bank said it was notified in late October by the US lender providing the currency “that it would be discontinuing the supply of cash notes to RMB”. The FirstRand unit did not identify the US bank or RMB’s Angolan client banks.
Banco Angolano de Investimentos, Angola’s largest privately owned bank by assets, was limiting client withdrawals to $2 000 a week, a person with knowledge of the matter said last week. BIC allows clients to withdraw a maximum of $2 500 a day, according to Teles.
RMB said on Friday that it could not quantify its share of the market to supply dollar notes in Angola and had no capacity to supply euros.
A Bloomberg reporter was told by four Luanda street money changers on Thursday that while they were buying dollars, they had none to sell.
Angolans travelling abroad should use credit, debit and prepaid cards, the country’s banks association said on November 5, citing the impact on supplies of cash of steps to fight money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
It warned of the “continued reduction in the delivery of banknotes” and advised travellers to buy the currency of their destination country, rather than dollars.
Banks needed to have greater control over the use of cash to comply with international rules, the association said.
Since Angola imported cash from other countries, especially the US and the EU, it needed to comply with these measures, it said. – Bloomberg FACEBOOKchief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he was planning to take two months of paternity leave when his daughter was born, citing studies that show children and families are better off when working parents can take time away from their jobs to spend it with their newborns. “This is a very personal decision,” he said in a post on Facebook. “Every day things are getting a little more real for us, and we’re excited to start this next stage in our lives.” Facebook currently offers its employees four months’ leave. – Bloomberg